Tunisia: AI Demands Respect for Human Rights

By Development Diaries
July 22, 2022

Amnesty International (AI) has called on the government of Tunisia to urgently address the country’s worrying human rights record.

The rights organisation also called on the country to revoke all new measures and laws that are inconsistent with international human rights standards.

In a new briefing titled Tunisia: A year of human rights regression since President’s power-grab AI said Tunisia’s already worrying human rights record has been further eroded in the year since President Kais Saied claimed sweeping powers on 25 July, 2021.

In February 2022, Development Diaries reported plans by the president to dissolve the High Judicial Council (HJC), which was set up as an independent judicial oversight body to ensure independence of the judiciary and charged with appointing most judicial positions in the North African country.

‘The one-year anniversary of President Saied’s power grab serves as a signpost of an ever-growing dismantling of human rights protections. Ruling by decree and without oversight or review, the president has undermined several key human rights achievements that the country has made in the ten years following the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of former President Ben Ali’, AI’s Regional Director for north Africa, Heba Morayef, said.

‘The actions of the Tunisian authorities raise serious concerns about the future of human rights in Tunisia. President Saied and others have dealt blow after blow to human rights and undermined the independence of the judiciary in particular’.

AI said it has documented 50 cases of arbitrary travel bans, imposed without evidence of court orders or other judicial proceedings, on Tunisian judges, senior state officials and civil servants, businessmen, and members of parliament.

The organisation also noted that the president had accused civil society groups in Tunisia of serving foreign interests and said he intended to ban ‘funding from abroad’.

Freedom House ranked Tunisia as ‘Partly Free’ in its 2022 Freedom in the World report on political rights and civil liberties, with the Maghreb country earning 64 points out of a possible 100.