Latest Publication on Lawyers as Transitional Actors in Tunisia

As part of our ethical commitment to ‘put something back’ into the jurisdictions that we are researching, the Lawyers, Conflict & Transition team has undertaken to deliver a series of reports for practitioners and local users.

The fourth in this series has now been published in both English and Arabic.

Prepared by Salwa El Gantri, our consultant for Tunisia, it provides an overview of the role of lawyers in Tunisia before, during and after the Revolution of 2010-2011.

Documenting both ‘bottom up’ activism and key legislative and institutional reforms, El Gantri explores the politicisation of an increasingly large swathe of Tunisian lawyers.

The report also considers the factors that either drew together or exacerbated divisions between leftist, liberal and Islamist lawyers.

A concluding section focuses on the role of lawyers in shaping the Second Republic – up to and including the parliamentary and presidential elections of November and December 2014. Key issues here include the role of lawyers in: combatting torture, creating a framework for transitional justice, and developing the Second Constitution. The tensions between lawyers and judges (which erupted in February 2014) is also explored in some detail.