“Human Rights in Tunisia: Sliding into Authoritarianism”

Side Event on the margins of the 63rd Session of the UN Human Rights Council (Room XI, Palais des Nations, Geneva)
17 September 2026 │ 12:00 – 13:00 CET
– Organised by:  Human Rights Watch
–  Co-sponsored by: Amnesty International, Avocats Sans Frontières, Euromed Rights, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), OMCT
– Concept note

Five years after President Kais Saied seized extraordinary executive powers in 2021, the human rights situation in Tunisia has severely deteriorated and the country is sliding into authoritarianism.
Tunisian authorities have intensified repression of political opponents, lawyers, journalists, activists, and other critical voices, by carrying out mass arrests on vague charges including on terrorism or conspiracy against state security and bringing abusive prosecutions within a judicial system under executive control. Much of civil society and the political opposition is now behind bars or in exile.
The government has turned arbitrary detention into a cornerstone of its repressive policy, aimed at depriving people of their civil and political rights.
Civic space has closed rapidly as authorities harassed activists and systematically targeted civil society organizations through arbitrary arrests, detentions, unfounded financial and criminal investigations and administrative suspensions. This campaign threatens to collapse one of the last remaining checks on Saied’s one-man rule.
Tunisia’s deepening authoritarian drift is having an increasingly severe impact on the country’s most vulnerable groups. Detainees face deteriorating conditions and suspicious deaths in custody; people on the move are exposed to torture, ill-treatment and other serious human rights violations; and an increasing number of individuals are subjected to arbitrary security measures and coercive practices of control. Several UN bodies and experts, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies, have repeatedly raised the alarm, particularly in the past few years, over the human rights situation in Tunisia.
This side event will provide a space for civil society to brief HRC member and observer states on the human rights situation in Tunisia and to present recommendations to both the Tunisian government and international partners to ensure accountability for on-going human rights violations and stop the downward spiral into authoritarianism.