Transitional Justice in Tunisia, Implementaion and Challenges

Abstract: In the end 2010 uprisings in Tunisia led to the fall of the regime of Ben Ali who had governed Tunisia since 1987. After the fall of the government request regarding how to handle the past in form of a transitional justice process was made, mainly from civil society. In December 2013 a law on transitional justice was adopted that defines the period that the transitional justice process is aiming on from 1956 until 2013. In terms of truth seeking and criminal proceedings the law is regulating the establishment of a Truth and Dignity Commission and specialized chambers. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the so far implementation of, and the challenges for, the legal measures Tunisia has been taking focusing on truth seeking and criminal proceedings. This has been done by a field study in Tunis during two months in the spring of 2015. The field study was partly financed by a Minor Field Study scholarship from the Swedish government agency Sida. The field study contained interviews with stakeholders from national civil society organisations, international organisations, commissionaires in the Truth and Dignity Commission as well as observations on events concerning transitional justice. Additional sources have been transitional justice literature, reports, news articles and legal texts. The process is quite new and so far the Truth and Dignity Commission has been established and it has started to work and to receive files from victims. The specialized chambers have so far not been established and there are still questions regarding the composition and how to elect judges for them. Furthermore the study found that among stakeholders in the transitional justice process there a lot of disagreements both regarding the law on transitional justice and on the Truth and Dignity Commission. Among the stakeholders there are also a schism between the one that represents secular organisations and the ones that represent islamistic ones. This schism expresses itself partly in terms of disagreements on the law, which crimes should be included but also the periodical mandate of the transitional justice process. Certain fractions of the civil society wants to redraft the law while others rather sees a redrafting as adventuring the entire process. Additionally, the study found a general concern among stakeholders that the new government elected in 2014 would not support the process. The implementation of the transitional justice measures has begun even though there are still questions to answer. There are several challenges for the on-going process; apart from the schism within the civil society there is more general problems within the Tunisian society, mainly economic challenges and security problems. All involved in the process is though aware of those challenges and a lot of work is done aiming on overcoming those obstacles