Minky Worden

Minky Worden wrote Human Rights Watch's review of the 2026 World Cup, published 22 July, three days after the final, which put 54 deaths in US immigration custody before kickoff and two more since at the top of its findings . The review also found that 12 of the 16 host cities had reached kickoff without a human rights action plan, against a Deadline HRW itself had set for 11 May. Worden's text documents conditions at Fort Bliss, the largest US immigration detention site, describing beatings, medical neglect and conditions of confinement that may amount to enforced disappearance.

As Director of Global Initiatives at Human Rights Watch, Worden has led the organisation's work scrutinising major sporting events, pressing organisers including FIFA and the IOC to attach human rights conditions to hosting rights and to account for their consequences once a tournament ends.

Her review aims its remedy at FIFA rather than at Washington, invoking the precedent of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, when FIFA's own advisers concluded the organisation owed compensation to migrant workers and their families, a fund FIFA never established. That precedent is the whole of HRW's leverage: a rights organisation asking football to answer for a state's detention record has no enforcement mechanism beyond reputational cost.