Transitional Justice in Tunisia: Innovations, Continuities, Challenges

Description

This book engages comprehensively with the dynamics of the transitional justice process in Tunisia and its mechanisms, elaborating lessons for transitional justice practice globally. Grounded in new empirical material as well as a broader awareness of transitional justice, this book provides a thorough assessment of transitional justice in Tunisia. Beyond an overview of the process, it critically engages with key questions such as the extent to which the process articulated global contemporary practice, such as liberal state-building and narrow conceptions of justice as civil-political rights, and to which it generated novel approaches at odds with the mainstream that can inform global practice. The book examines how the transitional justice process in Tunisia has been contextualised and made relevant to the nation’s circumstances and needs. It looks at innovation at the level of formal mechanisms and at the dynamics of mobilisation and contestation surrounding transitional justice both from civil society organisations and victims’ groups. Bringing together analysis from legal scholars, social scientists as well as activists and practitioners, the book challenges the legalism of transitional justice discourse globally, engendering a dialogue between these legal and judicial approaches on the one hand and alternative, more diverse and radical approaches to justice on the other, in order to both deal with the past and to address ongoing injustice. This first book in English to address the dynamics and mechanisms of the transitional justice process in Tunisia will appeal to students and scholars of transitional justice, human rights, peacebuilding, conflict and peace studies, development, and security studies, as well as policymakers and practitioners in these fields, and others with interests in Middle Eastern studies. Cover Endorsements Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements About the contributors Foreword Introduction I Informal mechanisms 1 Victim participation in a politicised process: the Karama victims’ association and the search for justice in transitional Tunisia 2 Breaking the racial taboo: black Tunisian activism as transitional justice 3 From the streets up: youth leadership of informal approaches to transitional justice in Tunisia 4 Transitional justice, contentious politics, and the struggle for the right to work 5 Making and remaking the past in post-revolutionary Tunisia: the uses of history in transitional justice II Formal mechanisms 6 The politics of technical assistance: international involvement in Tunisia’s transitional justice process 7 Overlooking women’s lived realities: how Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission dealt with the hijab ban 8 The private sector and the anti-corruption discourse in the Tunisian transition: Carthage was not destroyed 9 Transitional justice in Tunisia and colonial legacy 10 Reparations in post-revolution Tunisia: at the intersection of innovation and politicisation Conclusions: learning from the Tunisian experience Index