tunisia after 14 january and its social and political economy - Refworld

More specifically the report is an outcome of the EMHRN’s establishment in 2009 of a SolidarityGroup 5 for Tunisia composed of Tunisian and European EMHRN members as well as resourcepersons from Tunisian and European civil society 6 . The solidarity group had as its core activityto promote solidarity initiatives with the Tunisian human rights defenders and civil society, tostrengthen cooperation between Tunisian activists and to contribute to reinforcing theirnetworks inside and outside Tunisia. It chose as a core activity to look into human rights relationsbetween Tunisia and the EU seeking to use this instrument as a levier for human rights work.The Solidarity Group organized encounters between human rights groups inside Tunisia; itconducted advocacy activities in Spain and Italy (which led to the Ben Ali’s regimes amendmentof the Penal Code 61bis, criminalizing ‘anyone who establishes, directly or indirectly, contactswith agents of a foreign state, or foreign institution’). The group also produced a report on EUTunisian relations with a focus on civil and political rights that sharply criticised the Tunisianregime and the EU’s performance vis-à-vis the regime 7 .In April 2010 the EMHRN and the Solidarity group decided to look closer into the Tunisian regime’seconomic and social policies including the EU’s response to these, as one of the strongest andmost recurrent arguments met among EU and EU members state officials for supporting Ben Ali’sregime, and even for deciding to give Tunisia advanced status 8 , was the country’s economicand social performance.It was decided to look closer into the ‘Tunisian economic and social miracle’ in order to provideTunisian human rights defenders with arguments and lines of actions that could be used in theirwork.The concrete launch of the project took place in November 2010 in Rome during an encounterbetween the Solidarity group and one of the researchers of this report, Béatrice Hibou, who iswell-known for her in-depth knowledge of the country 9 .A month later the Tunisian revolution was set off when Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010set himself on fire in a desperate and emblematic act of protest against his life conditions andthe daily humiliations faced by him and his co-citizens.225 With the generous support of the EU Commission, the Spanish International Development Agency, theSwedish International Development Agency and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs6 Acsur – Las Segovias (Espagne); Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates – ATFD; Comité pourle Respect des Libertés et des droits de l’Homme en Tunisie – CRLDHT; Conseil National pour les Libertésen Tunisie – CNLT; Fédération Tunisienne pour une Citoyenneté des Deux Rives – FTCR; Ligue des droitsde l’Homme – LDH (France); Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des droits de l’Homme – LTDH; SolicitorsInternational Human Rights Group – SIHRG (Royaume Uni) ; Khémaïs Chammari (Tunisie) et Anna Bozzo(Italie), membres honoraires du REMDH7 Cf Inconsistent European Policies Fail to Address Human Rights Abuses in Tunisia, EMHRN, 20108 i.e. upgrading Tunisia’s relation to the EU within framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy9 Notably through her book ‘La Force de l'obéissance. Economie politique de la répression en Tunisie,Paris, La Découverte, 2006.