ICTJ recrute un consultant pour un projet de recherche sur la marginalisation systématique et les autres impacts des violations commises contre les femmes en Tunisie عودة إلى الفرص

[1] The consultant will aim to meet with approximately 10 women per governorate, except Tunis where active presence of multiple network members will allow for participation of approximately 20 women.  

Additional Background

In Tunisia, the transitional justice process in Tunisia is in its fourth year following the promulgation of the country’s Transitional Justice Law in 2013. The Truth and Dignity Commission, operating since 2014, has taken 65,000 victim statements, including 15,000 from women victims, and is in the midst of a series of hugely popular public hearings bringing victims stories, narratives and experiences to the population and world at large. Women’s organizations have been critical to ensuring that women victims’ experiences have formed an integral part of this narrative, and in promoting their meaningful participation in the transitional justice thus far. Eleven of these organizations came together near the start of the transitional justice process to form, with the support and facilitation of ICTJ, the “Transitional Justice is Also for Women Network.” This Network played a central role in recognizing a gap of statements from women victims to the TDC, for example, and worked with the TDC’s Women’s Committee to raise the number of women victims giving statements from 5% of the total to the 23% now making up the total submissions. The Network has also been engaged in meetings around the country to assess the quality of women’s experiences with the TDC, and to get a better sense of the profiles of women victims in the country.

Emerging from these meetings was a clear picture of a certain set of victims, making up the largest percentage of women victims overall, but less represented in the overall narrative thus far. In Tunisia, this set of victims is often referred to as “indirect victims,” or women who have experienced human rights violations as a result of the political activities of their family members. In most cases, these were relatives of men who had been arbitrarily detained.

Synonymous with this form of “indirect” victimhood is the idea of “the basket,” which originates from the obligation of Tunisian mothers, wives, daughters and sisters to care for their families, including when those family members are detained or imprisoned for their political activities. Throughout the years of dictatorship and repression, these women would consistently bring homemade food to their imprisoned family members on a weekly basis, and this practice became known by victims, penitentiary institutions, the police and society at large as “the basket”.

This experience led to widespread suffering for women: it was both a major financial burden for those coming from poor communities, but also for others as the police actively took steps to isolate these women and make this work difficult as a way to prevent them from receiving any financial assistance or help from the family or others. It also symbolizes the years of suffering these women have been through: the lost opportunities, deprivation of economic and social rights such as promotion in work or access to work and education, difficulties for their children at the state level because of administrative obstacles and at the societal level as well thanks to social stigmatization and isolation.

Previous work by the TJ is Also for Women Network has found that this particular group of women tends not to recognize these experiences as forms of victimhood, however. Many are not aware that they, too, qualify as victims eligible to give statements to the Truth and Dignity Commission or access other transitional justice measures, assuming only their imprisoned male or female relatives could do so. This has further entrenched their invisibility within the transitional justice narrative in the country, especially because the long-term impact of this form of victimization often takes the form of violations of these women’s social and economic rights.

However, when approached and when explicitly aware of their victim status, these women show a strong consciousness of their experiences of “secondary harms,” even if not all of them seek recognition for their contribution and suffering as indirect victims under the dictatorship. What they do seek are reparations in the form of rehabilitation and assurances of non-recurrence so that their children may live a better life. Until they are recognized, and the current challenges and daily obstacles they face as a result of their victimization are better understood, it will be impossible to identify concrete measures to be taken within the scope of the transitional justice process to meet their needs and better fulfill the myriad rights that have thus far been violated. Reparative and reform processes will be well placed to begin to address their concerns, but only if a full picture is developed and clear recommendations made.

With this project, ICTJ and the TJ is Also for Women Network hope to do just that. The project seeks to shed the light on the invisible to help create a balanced understanding within the transitional justice process of what happened to women in Tunisia and to help fill in the gaps still missing from the global picture of decades of dictatorship and violence in the country.