Trade Unionism under Occupation: The Case of Western Sahara
On 14 November 2025, it will be fifty years since the signing of the infamous and illegal Madrid Tripartite Agreements, through which the Spanish state betrayed the Sahrawi people after a century of colonisation. Since then, the Sahrawi people have faced war, exile in refugee camps, and brutal repression within the occupied Western Sahara. Only one month after those infamous accords, on 15 December 1975, the General Union of Workers of Saguia El Hamra and Río de Oro (UGTSARIO) was founded clandestinely. UGTSARIO works to raise national and international awareness of the injustice and arbitrariness suffered by Sahrawi workers in the Moroccan-occupied territories, and bears witness to how the Moroccan administration has reshaped the labour landscape while abolishing all trade union rights for Sahrawis. What does it mean to be a trade unionist under Moroccan occupation?
Speakers
Nafee Ahmed Mohamed
With a long-standing record of commitment and struggle, he was elected Secretary General of the Sahrawi organisation UGTSARIO in April 2025, during the union’s 10th Ordinary Congress. He previously served as Secretary General of the Union of Sahrawi Journalists and Writers (UPES).
Mahfoudha Bamba El Faqir
Born in 1984 in occupied El Aaiún, she was arrested on 15 November 2019 and imprisoned for six months in Lakhal Prison. She is a member of UGTSARIO and President of the Sahrawi Committee of Arbitrarily Dismissed Civil Servants and Workers. Since 2005, Mahfoudha has been subjected to severe physical and verbal assaults and police repression during peaceful demonstrations in support of Western Sahara’s right to self-determination and the release of Sahrawi political prisoners.
How to arrive
- Metro
- L4 Jaume I - L1 / L4 Urquinaona
- Bus
- V15, 47, 120, H16