Face of Truth: Consumer Protection or Market Protection?
Ibrahim Shaglawi
On the twentieth of May each year, World Metrology Day is celebrated — a global occasion connected to people’s daily lives, the future of economies, and the ability of states to build trust between citizens and governments.
Measurement, calibration, and quality control are not merely laboratories and devices; rather, they represent a philosophy of governance, a method of administration, and one of the fundamental pillars of the modern state.
In Sudan, this year’s celebration carries exceptional significance because it comes at a historic moment shaped by the challenges of war and the aspirations of reconstruction. At the same time, the need is growing for institutions capable of restoring citizens’ confidence and repairing the damage caused by years of conflict. From this perspective, metrology — or the science of measurement, as specialists describe it — appears as more than a technical discipline; it is the language of economic justice, the guardian of transparency and fair transactions, and the solid foundation upon which markets and services rely.
In this context, this article serves as a natural extension of a previous article in the Face of Truth series titled “The Story of a System that Killed Its Owner,” where the discussion opened around the issue of food security and the limits of institutional responsibility in protecting what reaches people’s tables, as well as the importance of citizens knowing how to preserve their rights.
These questions remain even more pressing today amid the complexities of Sudan’s post-war reality and the overlap between urgent needs and weak regulatory tools.
This meaning was reinforced by what the Director General of the Sudanese Standards and Metrology Organization, Rahba Saeed Abdullah, explained in her speech on the occasion. She affirmed that metrology represents a fundamental pillar in the process of economic recovery and reconstruction, and that rehabilitating national laboratories and hallmarking units, alongside moving toward precise measurement systems aligned with international standards, forms part of rebuilding public trust, protecting citizens’ savings, and ensuring market fairness and service quality.
This vision reflects a sound understanding that rebuilding the state begins with controlling the small but essential details that shape daily life.
However, the core of the crisis lies in the widening gap between the existence of institutions and the difficulty of accessing them. Here, the issue of direct communication with citizens emerges as one of the most important elements of effective oversight, because supervision that cannot be called upon when needed loses its meaning. This underscores the importance of the discussion I had with consumer affairs expert at the Standards Organization, Dr. Haitham Hassan Abdel Salam, where we agreed on the importance of emphasizing that the effectiveness of any protection system is measured not only by its media or administrative presence, but by its ability to respond quickly to people’s complaints and transform individual reports into regulatory action that safeguards citizens’ rights.
This dimension reveals that consumer protection cannot be achieved through legislation alone, but rather through an integrated network that begins with awareness and ends with rapid response, where hotlines and emergency numbers become central tools in this equation.
Therefore, citizens must know that there is a direct number through which they can report spoiled or non-compliant goods. This not only strengthens oversight, but also rebuilds trust between the state and society on practical rather than promotional foundations. Here lies the importance of highlighting the communication channels represented by the numbers (5960) for consumer complaints and (1312) for customer services, as essential infrastructure for trust and protection.
Experience over recent years — particularly during the war — has proven that when markets are left without regulation, they become fragile spaces where necessity overlaps with exploitation, and the consumer becomes the weakest link in the equation. Hence, protecting the market alone, as merely a space for supply and demand, is not sufficient to guarantee justice, because the market by nature leans toward profit, while society leans toward protection. When balance between the two sides disappears, public trust declines, and citizens begin searching for individual alternatives outside the governing frameworks.
In this context, the importance of this day emerges as an opportunity for the standards system to redefine the role of measurement within the state as a tool for regulating economic and social justice. Roads, bridges, buildings, as well as markets, food, medicine, and healthcare, all begin with an accurate standard, and any flaw in that standard may produce social injustice or direct health risks to people’s lives.
Perhaps what gives this context its deepest dimension is the ethical and religious aspect linking measurement with establishing justice in weights and measures — a dimension that is not new to human consciousness, but which acquires amplified meaning in times of instability. Precision is a condition for fairness, and the scale is not merely a commercial tool, but a symbol of integrity in public life. Any defect in the system of measurement is, in essence, a defect in justice and values.
According to #Face_of_Truth, the battle of state-building today is no longer fought solely through politics and economics, but through the details of daily life — from food and medicine to the goods circulating in markets — as a test of the state’s ability to protect citizens’ livelihoods. From this perspective, systems of measurement and calibration become part of sovereignty itself.
This is what we intended to indicate through the question: “Consumer Protection or Market Protection?” For in countries emerging from conflict, stability cannot be achieved without protecting both together.
Stay well and healthy.
Thursday, 21 May 2026
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