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Rights Rihab Boukhayatia19 October 2022

Sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia: Marginalization of a replacement workforce

Some 57 thousand sub-Saharan migrants are currently living in Tunisia, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). To make ends meet, many of them take on precarious, underpaid jobs as builders, servers and agricultural workers. This demographic of foreign workers has replaced a Tunisian workforce that has shown itself reluctant to such economic activities. In the meantime, Tunisian legislation has failed to address what is becoming a dire socio-economic dilemma, as the absence of clear policy leaves free rein to all sorts of abuses against migrant workers.

Rights Rihab Boukhayatia12 July 2022

Access to health care: It’s sink or swim for migrants in Tunisia

Tunisia is home to an ever-growing migrant population. And yet many migrants remain in an irregular situation. In the absence of a complete legal framework for refugees and asylum seekers, access to health services for this heterogeneous community is not only inadequate, but in some cases even non-existent. For certain migrants, their inability to seek proper treatment is a disadvantage with potentially fatal consequences.

Rights Ghaya Ben Mbarek12 June 2021

Sidi Hassine: After Another Man Dies in Police Encounter, “Who’s Next?” Citizens Ask

The death of 32-year-old Ahmed Ben Moncef Ben Ammar on June 8, allegedly while in police custody, has prompted several days of protests and clashes with police forces in the working class neighborhood of Sidi Hassine. Several people have been wounded, including a 15-year-old who was stripped naked and beaten in a widely-shared video that has prompted outrage. Sidi Hassine is also the neighborhood where 19-year-old Aymen Othman was killed when customs officials opened fire in 2018.

Society Asma Mbarek03 September 2018

Tunis’ homeless, another face of social crisis

Deterioration of the economic situation, soaring rent prices and feeble government intervention—all factors that contribute to an increase in the number of homeless individuals in the streets of Tunis, estimated at 3,000 in 2014. Ever more present on the streets, around transit stations, outside building entrances, in public gardens and elsewhere, they are a symptom of rampant social misery and marginalizing conservatism.

Culture Vanessa Szakal25 December 2017

In a town where « nothing has changed »: Documentary Film Festival of Redeyef

This year’s Documentary Film Festival of Redeyef (RFDR) takes place December 20-24, in the town whose name is almost synonymous with Tunisia’s phosphate industry and its deleterious effects on the surrounding populations and environment. Although the mining basin revolt of 2008 is considered a precursor to the Tunisian revolution in 2011, in 2017 residents affirm without hesitation that here in Redeyef, « nothing has changed ». Now in its fourth year, the RFDR, funded by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, is pushing to establish a perennial film festival here, a so-called difficult terrain that is parched for sustainable cultural outlets.

Rights Vanessa Szakal06 November 2015

Transitional Justice in Tunisia: fragmentation and competition

Following the publication of an ICTJ report on Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, Impunity Watch has presented the initial findings of a collaborative research project on victim participation in the transitional justice process. Amidst observations, analyses, and recommendations that have been presented by national and international actors in the field, the study represents the “most rigorous effort” thus far to evaluate victims’ perceptions of and roles in the undertaking of transitional justice in Tunisia.

Politics Vanessa Szakal21 July 2015

Tunisia and the Wall: government solidifies its vision of “national unity”… through exclusion

…Everyone, it seemed, was talking about the wall, a trench-lined sand barricade that is to stretch some 200 kilometers along Tunisia’s border with Libya. In the capital, a world away from the country’s borders, conversations are based on hear-say, rumors, and speculation. Approbation, uncertainty, suspicion…the sentiments provoked are varied, though many remain simply baffled at the belated unveiling and precipitous construction of the government’s latest counterterrorism mechanism, a wall between Tunisia and its neighbor to the south-east.