Sudan Media Forum
By Mohamed Ahmed Shabsha
KHARTOUM, July 2025, (Article Centre) – Sudan’s government has moved to dissolve the leadership of all trade unions and replace them with state-appointed “preparatory committees,” a decision that activists and legal experts say deepens a long-standing crisis for the country’s labour movement, now shattered by a three-year war.
The move, enacted through decisions by the state’s Registrar of Labour Organizations, has reignited a fierce debate over the right to free association and the future of union freedoms in Sudan, a battleground issue since the 2018 revolution that ousted long-time ruler Omar al-Bashir.
According to legal expert Mohamed Omar Shuminah, the decision cannot be separated from the turbulent transitional period that followed the revolution.
Following al-Bashir’s ouster after 30 years in power, the new military council froze the unions he had controlled. A subsequent civilian-led committee dissolved them entirely, viewing them as arms of the former regime, and installed temporary “steering committees.” However, those committees remained in place for years without a new mandate, creating a leadership vacuum, while revolutionary forces failed to build a new, independent union movement.
The war that erupted in April 2023 decimated what was left. Union headquarters were destroyed, members were displaced, and union work became nearly impossible. Shuminah said the state should have created an electoral path to restore legitimacy, rather than “reproduce the crisis” with new government-appointed committees.
He argued that the decision offers no clear roadmap or timeline for new elections, grants the Registrar undefined discretionary power, and opens the door for government encroachment on union independence, a principle protected by ILO Convention No. 87.
However, unionists Abdel Wahab Mohamed Mustafa and Mohamed Ali Khojali said in a joint article that the movement’s paralysis did not begin with this decision. They argue it is the result of long-term official neglect, the failure to repeal restrictive laws, and years without union elections.
Shuminah said the decision could be legally challenged in the Supreme Court as an administrative order that infringes on the rights of union general assemblies.
Another legal expert, Abdallah Abdel Aziz, agreed a challenge was possible but warned against a strategy that could backfire. He argued that suing merely to demand a timeline for elections would implicitly accept the Registrar’s authority. Instead, he said, the strongest legal challenge should be based on force majeure—the argument that the war makes free and fair elections impossible. With members displaced, workplaces destroyed, and no security guarantees, holding legitimate elections is unfeasible.
The Freedom of Association Convention (No. 87) stipulates that workers have the right to form unions without state interference and that unions cannot be dissolved by administrative order. The Registrar’s decision, critics say, exposes Sudan to accountability before the International Labour Organization.
The Coordination of Sudanese Professionals and Trade Unions, a prominent group, linked the union crisis to government decrees ordering a forced return to work during the war without safety guarantees, calling it a form of forced labour.
Critics, including Shuminah and Khojali, agree that the decision, despite its problems, is an opportunity to fight for an independent union movement. They argue that unions will not be revived by top-down decrees but through a grassroots struggle demanding free elections and legal protections.
For many activists, the battle is not just against this single decision, but against the state’s long history of hijacking the unions and a political freeze that has turned a once-powerful labour movement into a memory.
The Sudan Media Forum and its member institutions are publishing this material, prepared by Article Centre, to follow the legal and political debate surrounding the course of independent trade unionism and the obstacles it has faced from the December 2018 revolution until the outbreak of war in 2023.
