مرفق ترجمة عربية للبيان، ويمكن تنزيلها ومشاركتها

We condemn in the strongest terms Ministerial Decision No. (22) of 2026 issued by Sudan’s de facto Ministry of Human Resources and Social Welfare, which establishes a committee to “study and audit” federal government employees and prepare recommendations to reduce the public sector workforce.

This is not administrative reform. It is a political attack on workers, public services, and democratic rights, carried out under the cover of war and economic collapse.

Since the outbreak of the counter-revolutionary war for power, wealth, and control of Sudan on 15 April 2023, Sudan has been plunged into catastrophic devastation. The war is being fought between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the former Islamist regime on one side, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the other, following their joint overthrow of Sudan’s civilian government in the 2021 coup. Fuelled by regional and imperialist interests competing for influence, resources, and strategic control, the war has become a direct assault on the aspirations of the historic 2018 Revolution, when workers, women, youth, neighbourhood resistance committees, and revolutionary forces overthrew the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir.

Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced. Public services, infrastructure, workplaces, farms, and markets have been devastated, driving hunger, displacement, and social collapse. Workers and pensioners are enduring impossible conditions. Public sector workers across education, healthcare, and the civil service have repeatedly faced attacks on wages and conditions, while incentives, entitlements, and pensions remain unpaid. Instead of protecting livelihoods and rebuilding services, the de facto authorities are now threatening mass dismissals.

This decision evokes one of the darkest chapters in Sudan’s modern labour history. Following the 1989 coup, the former Islamist regime implemented systematic “public interest dismissal” policies that dismantled the civil service and removed more than 600,000 workers between 1989 and 1991, replacing them with politically loyal cadres. These purges destroyed trade union organisation, weakened public institutions, and entrenched dictatorship.

Today, the same methods are returning under new language: “administrative reform”, “workforce reduction”, and “auditing employees”.

Decision No. (22) of 2026 violates international human rights and labour law, including Article 23(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Articles 2(2), 6(1), and 7(a) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and Article 22(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees freedom of association and trade union rights.

It also stands in direct contradiction to the principles of the international trade union movement and the constitution of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which commits the global labour movement to defend workers’ rights, oppose anti-union repression, uphold collective bargaining and freedom of association, and fight for decent work, social protection, and equality.

Despite the war, destruction, and repression facing Sudan, Sudanese workers have continued to show internationalist solidarity with workers in Britain and across the world. This has included the Sudanese Bin Workers’ message to the striking Birmingham bin workers and the Sudanese Workers Alliance for the Restoration of Trade Unions and the Alliance for Demand-Based Campaigns (TAM) in their message to British unions at the TUC Congress 2024. They continue to stand alongside workers everywhere in the fight against exploitation, austerity, racism, war, and authoritarianism.

The formation of committees to reduce public sector employment—coming after the unlawful Decision No. (9) of 2026 dissolving legally established trade unions formed since the beginning of the Sudanese Revolution in 2018, and amid the continued repression of independent trade union activity—raises grave concerns that this process is not about reform, but about political exclusion and renewed empowerment. It threatens to turn state institutions once again into instruments of patronage and control, organised around political loyalty rather than competence, workers’ rights, or public need.

This decision is therefore politically illegitimate, morally indefensible, and legally void. Issued by an authority lacking democratic legitimacy and constitutional basis, it serves not reform but renewed empowerment, exclusion, and social control. It uses the cover of war and economic collapse to dismantle the civil service, restore old regime trade unions, silence voices demanding accountability, and push workers out of public life. That is why we reject it outright.

At a time when workers and pensioners are struggling to survive war, inflation, displacement, and violence, targeting employment is an attack not only on livelihoods, but on Sudan’s remaining public institutions themselves.

The civil service belongs to the Sudanese people. It is not a prize to be divided among forces of war and power.

A statement issued by the Trade Unions Front—which includes the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union, the Sudanese Teachers Committee, the Steering Committee of the Sudanese Engineers’ Union, the University of Bahri Lecturers’ Union, the University of Nyala Lecturers’ Union, the Atomic Energy Workers’ Union, the Sudanese Dramatists Syndicate, the University of Khartoum Lecturers’ Union, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate (currently suspended), and the Steering Committee of the Lawyers’ Union—has also been attached in both English and Arabic in support of this appeal.

Download a PDF version of this statement here