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Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a part of the Maghreb region of North Africa, and is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east; covering 163,610 km2 (63,170 sq mi), with a population of 11 million. It contains the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains and the northern reaches of the Sahara desert, with much of its remaining territory arable land. Its 1,300 km (810 mi) of coastline include the African conjunction of the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Basin. Tunisia is home to Africa's northernmost point, Cape Angela; and its capital and largest city is Tunis, located on its northeastern coast, which lends the country its name.
The politics of Tunisia takes place within the framework of a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic, with a President serving as head of state, Prime Minister as head of government, a unicameral legislature and a court system influenced by French civil law. Between 1956 and 2011, Tunisia operated as a de facto one-party state, with politics dominated by the secular Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) under former Presidents Habib Bourguiba and then Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. However, in 2011 a national uprising led to the ousting of the President and the dismantling of the RCD, paving the way for a multi-party democracy. October 2014 saw the first democratic parliamentary elections since the 2011 revolution, resulting in a win by the secularist Nidaa Tounes party with 85 seats in the 217-member assembly.
Capital punishment in France is banned by Article 66-1 of the Constitution of the French Republic, voted as a constitutional amendment by the Congress of the French Parliament on 19 February 2007 and simply stating "No one can be sentenced to the death penalty". The death penalty was already declared illegal on 9 October 1981 when President François Mitterrand signed a law prohibiting the judicial system from using it and commuting the sentences of the seven people on death row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, who was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille.
The Constitution of Tunisia is the supreme law of the Tunisian Republic. The constitution is the framework for the organization of the Tunisian government and for the relationship of the federal government with the governorates, citizens, and all people within Tunisia. Tunisia's first modern constitution was the Fundamental Pact of 1857. This was followed by the Constitution of 1861, which was not replaced until after the departure of French administrators in 1956, by the constitution of 1959. It was adopted on 1 June 1959 and amended in 1999 and 2002, after the Tunisian constitutional referendum of 2002.
The Tunisian Revolution, also called the Jasmine Revolution, was an intensive 28-day campaign of civil resistance. It included a series of street demonstrations which took place in Tunisia, and led to the ousting of longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. It eventually led to a thorough democratisation of the country and to free and democratic elections.
Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi was a Tunisian statesman who was the president of Tunisia from 31 December 2014 until his death on 25 July 2019. Previously, he served as the minister of Foreign Affairs from 1981 to 1986 and as the prime minister from February 2011 to December 2011.
The Constituent Assembly of Tunisia, or National Constituent Assembly (NCA) was the body in charge of devising a new Tunisian constitution for the era after the fall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD)–regime. Convoked after the election on 23 October 2011, the convention consists of 217 lawmakers representing Tunisians living both in the country and abroad. A plurality of members comes from the moderate Islamist Ennahda Movement. The Assembly held its first meeting on 22 November 2011, and was dissolved and replaced by the Assembly of the Representatives of the People on 26 October 2014.
The issue of human rights in Tunisia, is complex, contradictory, and, in some regards, confusing in the wake of the Tunisian revolution that began in January 2011 and overthrew the longstanding dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. While the immediate months after the revolution were characterized by significant improvements in the status of human rights, some of those advances have since been reversed. The situation remains in a state of flux, with different observers providing virtually irreconcilable accounts of the current status of human rights in that country.
Chokri Belaïd, also transliterated as Shokri Belaïd, was a Tunisian politician and lawyer who was an opposition leader with the left-secular Democratic Patriots' Movement. Belaïd was a vocal critic of the Ben Ali regime prior to the 2011 Tunisian revolution and of the then Islamist-led Tunisian government. On 6 February 2013, he was fatally shot outside his house in El Menzah, close to the Tunisian capital, Tunis. As a result of his assassination, Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali announced his plan to dissolve the existing national government and to form a temporary "national unity" government.
A political crisis evolved in Tunisia following the assassination of leftist leader Mohamed Brahmi in late July 2013, during which the country's mainly secular opposition organized several protests against the ruling Troika alliance that was dominated by Rashid al-Ghannushi's Islamist Ennahda Movement. The events came as part of the aftermath of the Tunisian Revolution which ousted the country's longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, followed by a general election which saw Ennahda win a plurality alongside Moncef Marzouki's allied Congress for the Republic (CPR). The crisis gradually subsided when Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh resigned and a new constitution was adopted in January 2014.
On 18 March 2015, two militants attacked the Bardo National Museum in the Tunisian capital city of Tunis, and took hostages. Twenty-one people, mostly European tourists, were killed at the scene, and an additional victim died ten days later. Around fifty others were injured. The two gunmen, Tunisian citizens Yassine Labidi and Saber Khachnaoui, were killed by police. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack.
On 26 June 2015, a mass shooting occurred at the tourist resort at Port El Kantaoui, about 10 kilometres north of the city of Sousse, Tunisia. Thirty-eight people, 30 of whom were British, were killed when a gunman, Seifeddine Rezgui, attacked a hotel. It was the deadliest non-state attack in the history of modern Tunisia, with more fatalities than the 22 killed in the Bardo National Museum attack three months before. The attack received widespread condemnation around the world. The Tunisian government later "acknowledged fault" for slow police response to the attack.
The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is a group of four civil society organizations that were central mediators in the effort to consolidate democratic gains and to form a lasting constitutional settlement in Tunisia following the unrest and historic regime change of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.[1]
Mohamed Ennaceur is a Tunisian politician who served as the acting president of Tunisia for 91 days, from President Beji Caid Essebsi's death on 25 July 2019 until he handed over the presidency to Kais Saied as the winner of the 2019 Tunisian presidential election on 23 October 2019. Since 2014, he has also been the President of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People and leader of the governing Nidaa Tounes party. Previously, he served as Minister of Social Affairs in the 1970s and 1980s under President Habib Bourguiba and again in 2011 in the transitional Ghannouchi and Essebsi governments.
The ISIL insurgency in Tunisia refers to the ongoing militant and terror activity of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant branch in Tunisia. The activity of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Tunisia began in June 2015, with the Sousse attacks, though an earlier terror incident in Bardo Museum in March 2015 was claimed by ISIL, while the Tunisian government blamed Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade for the attack. Following massive border clashes near Ben Guerdane in March 2016, the activity of the ISIL group was described as an armed insurgency, switching from previous tactics of sporadic suicide attacks to attempts to gain territorial control.
Latifa Habachi is a Tunisian lawyer and politician who is a member of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People.
Mabrouka Mbarek is a Tunisian academic and politician who was a member of the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia.
Sana Ben Achour is a Tunisian academic, lawyer and activist, and a specialist in public law. She is a professor of public law at the Faculty of Legal, Political and Social Sciences at the University of Carthage. She is active in several feminist organisations, and has founded a women's refuge shelter.
Presidential elections were held in Tunisia on 15 September 2019, the second direct vote for the presidency since the 2011 revolution. The elections had originally been planned for 17 and 24 November, but were brought forward after the death of incumbent President Beji Caid Essebsi on 25 July to ensure that a new president would take office within 90 days, as required by the constitution.
Kais Saied is a Tunisian politician, jurist and a retired university professor of constitutional law serving as the president of Tunisia since October 2019. He was president of the Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law from 1995 to 2019.
References
- 1 2 3 Sbouai, Sana (15 October 2014). "Sana Mersni: Députée Ennahdha, Qui Se Représentei". Inkyfada (in French). Retrieved 26 January 2017.
- ↑ Marzouk, Hamza (24 August 2016). "Sana Mersni : le gouvernement Youssef Chahed est un message positif pour la jeunesse". L'Economiste (in French). Retrieved 26 January 2017.
- ↑ "HRW: bill on reconciliation may hinder transitional justice process". Agence Tunis Afrique Presse. 14 July 2016. Retrieved 26 January 2017.
- ↑ "Parties Clash Over Judicial Oversight, Judges Threaten Strike". TN News. 14 January 2014. Retrieved 26 January 2017.
- ↑ Blibech, Fadhel; Driss, Ahmed; Longo, Pietro (February 2014). Citizenship in Post-Awakening Tunisia: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions (PDF) (Report). University l'Orientale in Naples.
- ↑ "Tunisia approves death penalty for 'terror crimes'". The Daily Star Lebanon. 24 July 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2017.
- ↑ "Tunisia parliament approves death penalty for 'terror crimes'". Channel NewsAsia. 23 July 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2017.