There’s always a ‘story’ of the World Cup. Before the football starts, when everyone wants to talk about the tournament but no one has kicked a ball, there is always something that we all focus on. In South Africa it was security. In Brazil there have been the concerns over the stadiums and the favelas, but, oddly, the story that has dominated the build-up to Brazil has been Qatar.

It is not just Qatar, of course. It is Fifa as well, and how the game is governed. Two British newspapers have led the world in two parallel stories.

In the last week or so, the Sunday Times has rocked the football world with what appears to be compelling evidence of corruption at the heart of the Fifa bidding process. As Ed Miliband has said, if these allegations are verified there will be an overwhelming case for the bidding process to be reopened immediately.

We will have to wait and see how seriously Fifa is taking these allegations and how extensive the Garcia report into the bidding process will be. But football’s governors must be in no doubt that the time has come to get their house in order. The world is watching.

But the bidding process is not the only reason Qatar 2022 is under the spotlight. The Guardian, along with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have exposed industrial-scale abuse of migrant workers.

When I travelled to Doha at the start of April I saw first-hand the despair and desperation of workers from south Asia and Africa who felt conned, trapped and afraid. For too many, passports had been seized, pay withheld, and health and safety precautions were non-existent. One man I met had not been able to go home to see his young children for five years. Others had not been paid in months. One man had lost the sight in one eye because his employer would not supply safety glasses.

Worse still, too many of those who came to work on the construction sites in and around Doha have lost their lives. Even the audit commissioned by the Qatari government called for an investigation into the high numbers of deaths by heart failure among the migrant population. A call that, up to now, appears to have been rejected.

Bill Shankly was wrong – football is not more important than life and death. No one should have to die to bring us the World Cup.

So Fifa has a responsibility here too. This week the Fifa Congress meets ahead of the World Cup. I have written to each of the 209 members, calling on them to do three things.
First, unite with one clear voice to demand real and lasting change to the Kafala system immediately, and insist on improved monitoring of the rights and conditions of migrant workers.
 Second, insist that a full and independent inquiry is undertaken into the high number of deaths by heart failure of the migrant worker population, as proposed by the DLA Piper investigation. 
And finally, and crucially, they should ensure that human rights clauses are written in to the bidding process – I have been calling on Fifa to make this change for some time. Never again should a World Cup be awarded without strict rules to ensure that the workers that make it possible are treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve.

Football and the World Cup can be a great force for change and development. But true development must be based around a respect for human rights. Anything less is a mirage.

Fifa is faced with two choices this week – change, stamp out corruption and get serious about human rights, or rot from within. Football fans the world over will hope that the games governors make the right choice.

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Jim Murphy MP is shadow secretary of state for international development. He tweets @JimMurphyMP