Mobilizing against State-Sanctioned Gendered Violence in Post-2011 Tunisia

• In Event: Activism against, and Accountability for, Sexual Violence in the Global South

Abstract

The months following the Jasmine uprising that toppled Tunisian dictator Ben Ali in 2010-2011 were an exhilarating time for a diverse group of women actors who labelled themselves as “Nisswiyyat,” or “feminists” in Arabic. Established women’s organizations were energized by the uprising and women’s active role in it, while many new feminist initiatives and collectives were also formed. This paper draws on four years (2013-2017) of multi-cited ethnographic field work, 75 in-depth interviews with feminist activists, and examination of NGO reports, court cases, draft by-laws, and transcripts of transitional justice proceedings to examine two cases of feminist activists working to hold state perpetrators of gender-based violence (GBV) accountable and explores the efforts of feminists seeking the passage in the newly democratic parliament of comprehensive anti-GBV legislation. I juxtapose the failure of feminist efforts to hold security and police agents accountable for committing GBV with the relative success of them to pass laws against gender-based arguments to demonstrate the complexity of the legal feminist mobilization in post-revolutionary Tunisia.

The Truth and Dignity Commission (TDC) created in 2014 to handle gross human rights violations committed under authoritarian rule was hailed by the international community as an important step forward for the Tunisian transition. Women-led groups gathered thousands of testimonies from women detailing violence at the hands of state agents, including against female family members of political opponents, promoting a nation-wide campaign against state-sanctioned gender violence. I draw on in-depth interviews with feminist activists, attendance at five of the TDC public testimony sessions in 2017, and analysis of the written transcripts of the other nine sessions, to show how dependency on the punitive logic of the state led to the failure of the TDC to hold state agents accountable for politically motivated sexual violence. I then move to more recent cases of state violence against women, using interviews with feminist lawyers and analysis of court cases to track lawyers’ efforts to defend women detained by the police for minor violations and subsequently subjected to sexual violence at the hands of the Police. While efforts to hold state actors accountable for GBV had mixed results, the third feminist effort which I examine – the work of the Feminist Coalition to End Violence Against Women (CEVAW) formed in 2015 to push for a new law against all forms of GBV – was much more successful. The law tackles GBV in both the public and private spheres, expanding the definition of punishable violence committed against women and children, including sexual harassment in public spaces. It was also meant to guarantee legal, financial and social support for survivors. Analyzing how feminists involved in the campaign framed their efforts for reform within the logics of a protective interventionist state, I situate their success within the broader context of the contradictory nature of state-sponsored feminist projects in Tunisia.



The paper demonstrates how these two sets of efforts demonstrate a tension at the heart of feminist post-uprising efforts as they sought to reconcile two competing goals; reforming the police state and curbing its punitive power and arbitrariness, and the popular demands for transitional justice against individual state agents which, ironically, required more state intervention. I argue here that the tools of legal feminism enabled feminists to achieve important legal gains for women, but it also resulted in them playing a central, albeit unintended, role in reconsolidating state authority and guaranteeing continued impunity to its agents following the democratic transition.

Author

• Hind M Ahmed Zaki, University of Connecticut