On Monday, November 23, a 21-year old woman died after falling into a stormwater drainage channel in the industrial area of Enfidha in the governorate of Sousse. Her death marks the second time in less than two months that dangerous infrastructure has taken the life of a young person.
Ten years after Tunisia’s revolution, the Tunisian Statehas still not managed to recover assets held overseas. Despite of the legal arsenal set up for this task, the list of assets recovered still falls short of expectations. Without any apparent regard for the authorities already set up for the job, on October 22 President Kais Saied issued a decree for the creation of a committee within the Office of the President tasked with recovering money and assets held abroad. The initiative has not gone unnoticed.
The town of Tabarka, nestled between green mountains and the sea, close to the Algerian border, boasts a natural beauty that has made it a major tourist attraction for decades. In 2017, nearly a quarter of a million tourists visited Tabarka and its nearby mountain villages according to one report. Despite the beauty, the town’s main trash dump had been near one of the main roads entering the town for years until 2015, when it was finally moved. But the new dump location is near a hospital, close to a training school for the hospitality sector, and may be leaking into local water resources. When locals living near the dump protested earlier this year by blocking a national highway, calling on officials to move it elsewhere, several were briefly detainedby police.
Harassment, revenge porn, blackmail: 80 percent of women in Tunisia have experienced violence on the internet. This violence is multifaceted and rampant on social media. In an effort to stop it, some have decided to publicly denounce their aggressors on Facebook through the Ena Zeda groups. But is this enough to stem the violence?
The government began raising donations from Tunisians to help fight Covid-19 in March, but now many are concerned about how that money—just over 200 million Tunisian Dinars (TND)—has been spent. Several high level officials have issued statements that appear to contradict each other regarding how the money has been spent or whether it has been spent at all. Activists and civil society groups claim that officials are providing little transparency on this issue, and some have alleged that Covid-19 funds have been misappropriated and stolen.
As the number of Tunisians infected with Covid-19 continues to climb, hospital facilities are on the frontlines without the means they need to handle the situation. According to the National Medical Council (CNOM), three physicians have died, ten have been hospitalized and hundreds of medical and paramedical personnel have been infected with the virus. How are medical and paramedical professionals handling the situation?
The general lockdown imposed in Tunisia during the first wave of Covid-19 had disastrous consequences for the most disadvantaged segments of the population. A new study published by the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) examines the situation of women farm laborers, cleaning ladies in hospitals, construction workers as well as waiters at cafés, restaurants and bars. Employees already in precarious situations in Tunisia have become more vulnerable than ever.
On September 23, journalist Mohamed Yassine Jelassi, a member of Nawaat’s team, was elected president of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) for a three-year term. The association’s new executive committee is composed of nine members, including three women. With remarkable youth participation and a decent amount of female participation, the new committee reflects changes that have marked the sector within a tumultuous socio-political backdrop.
When Tunisia went into lockdown from March to June, most private sector businesses experienced at least some stoppage of work. As might be expected, the sector that saw the least closures was the health sector, where 45 percent of businesses remained open, according to an official study. But in the number two position was the information and communication sector—which includes call centers—where 42 percent stayed open without interruptions. According to a new report looking at the rights of call center workers, call centers were “granted authorization to maintain physical operations as an ‘essential service’” even though many maintained “tightly packed spaces with shared workstations and equipment…fertile ground for the virus to spread.”
In the early hours before dawn on Tuesday, October 12th, the municipal police of Sbeitla (governorate of Kasserine) bulldozed an illegally built kiosk where a cigarette vendor was sleeping. Kasserine remains one of the most underprivileged regions in Tunisia. During the demolition, the roof collapsed on the victim’s body, leading to his tragic death and sparking protests in the region.
I do not engage men in conversations on gender equality, especially cis, straight men. The last time I did, I was called a ‘feminazi’ for shaming a man who unabashedly invalidated a woman’s feelings toward her own menstruation. I did not understand how a man could draw such far-fetched conclusions without even having a vagina, let alone bleeding from it. Moreover, what would entitle him to invalidate her experiences and opinions?
On Tuesday, October 6, demonstrators gathered in front of Parliament to protest a draft law under discussion seeking to grant security forces legal immunity from prosecution for use of force—the first of several protests against the law this week. Police forces then assaulted protesters and detained four of them at a police station in the Bardo neighborhood. Meshkal/Nawaat spoke with the four people who were detained and later released about the police abuse they experienced.
We are delighted to announce a new reporting partnership between Meshkal & Nawaat.
On September 5, after months of flirting, the Al-Karama parliamentary coalition announced its alliance with the Qalb Tounes party. The two parliamentary blocs finally decided to confess their love in a joint vote of confidence for Mechichi’s government.
Many Tunisians buy their goods from small shops. But before those goods reach local shops, they pass through a series of middlemen who shape the final price. In the groceries sector, this includes wholesalers and “dawarjis”—independent transporters with vans who buy goods from wholesalers and sell them to small retailers. A new startup is trying to sell an alternative supply chain system using online tools, but many prefer the way business is done currently.
With opposition to political Islam as her hobbyhorse, the former RCD member and current president of the Free Destourian Party (PDL) Abir Moussi has become the figurehead of opposition to Ennahdha. This positioning on the political chessboard has resulted in a meteoric rise. But is she really opposed to the Islamists’ social vision? Is she really progressive?
A hostage to its « sacro-patriarchal » paradigm, Tunisia’s Code of Personal Status has become a glass ceiling—blocking women’s access to full and complete citizenship and preventing them from enjoying all of their human rights—in a society where the demand for equality between men and women presents a permanent threat to a public order that is gendered.
In efforts to develop its multimedia platform, Nawaat.org is opening up to creative forces in the domains of art and technology in order to offer more innovative content. We are calling on artists, multimedia technicians, developers, web architects, designers and, of course, journalists to join in our efforts.
