Category: Opinion
The UGTT Labor Union: Tunisia’s Powerbroker
By Mohamed-Salah Omri (This article originally appeared in openDemocracy, a nonprofit online publication) To understand Tunisia, one must get to grips with its labor movement. The Tunisian General Labor Union (known by its French acronym UGTT) has affected the character of Tunisia as a whole since the late 1940s. It significantly impacted the 2011 revolution [...]
Interview: Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States
On November 15, 2013, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki appointed Ambassador Mohamed Ezzine Chelaifa Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States of America. The following interview with Ambassador Chelaifa was conducted by Tunisia Live co-founder Zied Mhirsi and originally published on the Tunisian-American Young Professionals website. Zied Mhirsi: Can you tell us a little bit about your training [...]
Journalists, Ben Ali, and Marzouki’s ‘Black Book’
By Ali Ben Mabrouk Tunisia knew just two presidents, Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, from 1956 until 2011. Both of them were dictators and tried to control the media as best they could so that journalists and writers would serve their propaganda. Now, a ‘Black Book’ leaked by the office of President Moncef [...]
Tunisians Deserve Right to Strike, But Priorities May Be Misplaced
By Ali Ben Mabrouk Many Tunisians are sick and tired of the constant strikes now taking place for petty reasons. This is part of a broad dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in the country. According to a recent poll conducted by 3C Etudes, 35 percent of Tunisians aged between 18 and 60 years [...]
What Tunisia Can Learn From Postwar Japan
by Brahim Guizani, Ph.D These days, we Tunisians are celebrating the revolution of January 14, 2011. This event will be one of the main turning points that history books will tell about for centuries to come. Only history will be able to judge how deep are the changes this revolution has brought, and how successful [...]
We Need a Revolution in Tunisian Tourism
by Jerry Sorkin As Tunisia approaches the third anniversary of the Revolution, the country must urgently boost its economy, which has continued to decline since January 2011. The need to rekindle Tunisia’s tourism is of utmost importance, given tourism’s role in the nation’s gross national product, employment, and its image abroad. Tourism is the number [...]
Eight Reasons to do Business in Tunisia
The idea of doing business in Tunisia might seem ill-advised right now. The major credit rating agencies have issued dreary assessments of the country’s economic future, while inflation, unemployment, and many other key economic indicators suggest that any investment here could be quite precarious. Two and a half years after Ben Ali was forced from [...]
When Foreign Aid Fails: Challenges to Effective Assistance in Tunisia
Development assistance has never been such an important topic of conversation among Tunisians as it is today. The international support that Tunisia may or may not enjoy is seen as ever more essential to the political stability of the country and to the success or failure of the political transition. Despite the many achievements made [...]
Islamism and Identity in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia
When the Arab revolutions sprung forth from Tunisia on January 14, 2011, spreading through Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, the slogans from the crowds called for freedom and dignity. But in Tunisia, once the Islamist Ennahdha party rose to power, it tried to replace revolutionary slogans of freedom with slogans of identity. In the opinion of [...]
How to Live in Tunisia on Less Than $10 a Day
In the United States, when we hear that over 80 percent of the world’s population lives on $10 or less a day, it may sound almost impossible. How could a person survive on less than what some may spend on a coffee habit? Yet in Tunisia it is quite feasible to live well on such [...]