Transitional Justice in Tunisia: Innovations, Continuities, Challenges

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.

Simon Robins is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR), University of York, UK.

Paul Gready is Professor of Applied Human Rights and Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR), University of York, UK.