Since the Jasmine Revolution, a number of decrees and laws have been passed in Tunisia that implicate and affect key rights at the heart of organizing on the ground and online, including the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, political participation, and access to information.
These pieces of legislation provide important insight into how the law can be instrumentalized—at times to create democratic openings and at other times, to increase restrictions on fundamental rights. This fact sheet, put together by TIMEP’s Legal Unit, tracks and unpacks some of the key laws in question, including those on civil society, freedom of information, and counter-terrorism. Even today, parliamentarians continue to introduce draft legislation that threatens to have reverberating implications for fundamental freedoms, including a state of emergency law, audiovisual communication law, and police protection law—all of which have been tabled as a result of coordinated civil society mobilization.