Niger

On 8 January 2023, the national delegate of the National Union of Contractual Secondary School Workers in Niger (UNECS) and his deputy were taken into custody by the gendarmerie in Dosso on the instruction of the deputy prosecutor of the regional High Court because of their trade union activities. They were released the next day at around 6pm.

In the education sector in Niger, the Ministry of Education created three unions of contract workers which it used to break the teachers’ strike in January 2023.The government also arbitrarily transferred union officials to remote areas and refused to remit union dues to the National Union of Primary Teachers (SNEB) as retaliatory measures after the strike.

In Niger, anti-union dismissals were frequent. Members of the Executive Bureau of the Union of Money Transfer Agents (SYNASTRA) were threatened after forming their union and two of them were dismissed.

The general secretary of the Syndicat des Contrôleurs aériens du Niger (SYCAN) was fired without motive in June 2022. Unions suspected anti-union discrimination. His dismissal was invalidated in court later in the year.