Fifa was accused of an “astonishing whitewash” after it paved the way for Saudi Arabia to be awarded the 2034 World Cup next month.

Fifa’s official report, authored by secretary general Mattias Grafstrom, the right-hand man of president Gianni Infantino, gave Saudi an overall World Cup host rating of “4.2/5” ensuring it would face no technical barriers to hosting the tournament.

It appeared to promise a number of human rights reforms that would, Fifa maintained, mean there would be rights for migrant workers, press freedom, and no torturing of critics of the regime – at least for the duration of the tournament.

The record score was also awarded despite no clarity on when the tournament could be played, with the report highlighting daytime temperatures in the capital Riyadh being in excess of 40 degrees Celsius in the traditional World Cup months of June and July.

“FIFA’s evaluation of Saudi Arabia’s World Cup is an astonishing whitewash of the country’s atrocious human rights record,” Amnesty’s head of labour rights and sport Steve Cockburn said.

“The sports body has decided to ignore the clear evidence of worker exploitation, legalised discrimination and severe repression, and press ahead with a predetermined decision.

“At every stage of the process, FIFA has ensured that nothing would stand in the way of Saudi Arabia hosting the 2034 World Cup and it has effectively discarded its human rights policies to achieve this end.

“Unless huge human rights reforms are introduced, people will be exploited, evicted from their homes and even die as a result.”

Infantino is desperate for Saudi to be officially anointed as the World Cup host at Fifa Congress in Zurich on December 11 without any hitches, although its decision to publish its report at 11.32pm (GMT) on Friday night demonstrated a certain shyness about its intentions. The way forward for Saudi to get 2034 was smoothed considerably in October last year when Fifa announced that all submissions to host it had to be made within eight weeks. It was such a short deadline that the only serious rivals to Saudi, Australia, had to withdraw its candidature.

In its report, evaluating the Saudi bid and circulated to media, Fifa said that Saudi’s human rights record would not be assessed according to “the general human rights context” – or, in other words, its history. Instead, it would be about how effectively a bidder sought to “address human rights records connected with a tournament”.

Human rights and the rights of migrant workers are an awkward issue for Fifa, which desperately needs Saudi finance as part of Infantino’s plan to expand the World Cup and also potentially fund its expanded Club World Cup. That tournament, launched in the summer of next year, has struggled to secure broadcast contracts. It may well need the backing of Saudi’s de facto ruler, prime minister and crown prince Mohammed Bin-Salman, to be able to pay the kind of fees and prize money that the biggest European clubs demand.

Balancing western condemnation of Saudi’s human rights record, not least the 2018 state-sponsored murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, with the appetite for Saudi finance is a major preoccupation for Fifa.

A considerable section of the 110-page Fifa report on Saudi is dedicated to human rights – which would have been an extremely delicate balancing act for the governing body and the secretive oil and gas rich kingdom run by a dynastic ruling family. A number of key guarantees were made, explicitly including labour rights of migrant workers, rights of children, gender rights, disability rights, the non-specific “non-discrimination” and press freedom.

Saudi attitude to homosexuality has ‘gaps’ compared with international standards

It was notable that among those there was no explicit reference to LGBT rights which appears to be a step too far for Saudi, Bin-Salman and its friends at Fifa. Under “non-discrimination”, there appeared to be a vague reference to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Saudi. The Fifa assessment of Saudi had noted what it said euphemistically were Saudi’s “gaps and reservations in the implementation of relevant international standards, in particular where they are seen to contradict Islamic law.”

Given the embarrassment caused to Fifa over the lack of migrant worker rights for the 2022 Qatar World Cup, and deaths among a labour force from countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Saudi promised “robust workers’ welfare systems”

Fifa also appears to have secured a promise from Saudi security agencies that no-one will be tortured. It noted new regulations that mitigated against “arbitrary arrest or detention as well as acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Fifa impressed by 4.7/5 international broadcast centre

Fifa said that “significant effort and time” would be necessary to implement a human rights strategy drawn up by Saudi itself. Fifa’s own human rights assessment of the country has been undertaken by law firm Clifford Chance. Fifa said that “the substantial efforts” and “concrete commitments” made by Saudi over human rights meant Fifa believed it could “work together constructively to develop mechanisms to address those risks”.

Fifa also claimed that there was a “good potential for the tournament to serve as a catalyst for reforms”. Saudi says it will introduce the reforms over the next 10 years as part of the Vision 2030 plan for the kingdom under Bin-Salman, who cemented his hold on power in 2017.

In its overall risk assessment of Saudi’s bid to host 2034, Fifa assessed Saudi’s human rights record “risk” as “medium” – the same as it rated its stadium infrastructure and its accommodation, among others. No category was assessed as high risk. In its scoring system, Fifa was particularly impressed by Saudi plans for its international broadcast centre which scored 4.7/ 5 with the overall score coming out at 4.2.

Fifa also released its assessment of the joint bid for the 2030 World Cup jointly hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain with games in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as part of the centenary celebrations of the tournament. The three key hosts were also rated 4.2 out of five. The three South American nations got a much lower average score of 3.6 which was, fortunately for Fifa, sufficient for them to host games.