Tunisia: Eight Years After It Launched the Arab Spring, Tunisia Still Struggles With the Legacy of Dictatorship

press release

On Monday, Tunisians once again commemorate the anniversary of their 2011 revolution, which also inspired the broader Arab Spring uprisings around the Middle East and North Africa. This year, once again, Tunisians and others are reexamining these events, trying to tease out their larger meaning. Many still look to Tunisia as a potential model for a successful democratic transition, even as they recognize that it remains a fragile experiment. But as Tunisians mark the occasion this year, it is becoming apparent that the abuses that led to the revolution are being forgotten.

It's not that Tunisians haven't tried to investigate the past. In 2013, legislators passed a law setting up a transitional justice process aimed at exposing human rights abuses by the government and assigning responsibility for abuses, to seek redress and ultimately reconciliation. In 2014, the government established the Truth and Dignity Commission to carry out this process. Like in so many other truth commissions, such as in South Africa and Chile, its work throughout has fallen short of victims' expectations.

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