Tunisia

Unemployment – especially among the young – falling living standards and lockdowns have sparked riots across the countryCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageEttadhamen, a marginalised district on the outskirts of Tunis, wears unrest well. Over the weekend and into this week, violent protests have dominated life in this […]

Delays in publication of official list of those killed and wounded provokes anger and claims of government indifferenceMoslem Kasdallah rests on his crutches, the stump of his amputated leg on display. His voice hoarse, he yells the demands that, after years of delay, have brought him and the other wounded and bereaved of the Tunisian revolution to the […]

Tunisia's coastguard on Thursday retrieved the bodies of 20 migrants after their boat capsised, with at least 15 more, including children, still missing.

Mustapha Aroui held along with 22 others after 200 containers of decaying household and medical waste discovered in JulyTunisia’s environment minister has been arrested following the attempted importation of household and hospital waste from Italy.Mustapha Aroui was dismissed from his post and subsequently arrested on Sunday, along with several other […]

Lessons have been learned about how to convert the forces that demand equality into those that deliver itAt the end of 2010, I was en route to Sudan for Christmas, scouring Arabic social media in search of scraps of information about a story unfolding in Tunisia; a story the Arab media was censoring and the western media was still ignoring. A street trader, […]

Africa Calling podcast looks at some of the week's top stories from the African continent, including reports from the field and analysis with regional experts. This week we’re talking about the security situation in Nigeria, continued fighting in Ethiopia, and Sudan's removal from the US terror list. We also hear from representatives of Western Sahara’s […]

When a young street seller set himself on fire to protest lack of employment opportunities and government corruption, Tunisia became the cradle of the Arab spring revolutions that swept the middle east. Less than a month later, the dictator Ben Ali had to flee the country he had ruled for 23 years. Ten years on, what change has the revolution brought and […]

The Guardian’s international correspondent Michael Safi returns to Tunisia where, 10 years ago, fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself. It triggered a wave of protests across North Africa and the Middle East which have had profound ramifications In 2010 the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian fruit seller, triggered […]

Thanks in part to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Tunisians are freer than before, but many are miserable and disillusionedHis act of despair still shakes the Arab world. Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit seller whose self-immolation triggered revolutions across the Middle East, has a boulevard named after him in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis. In […]

The extraordinary shock of people power gave way to a bitter backlash. So where to now?A decade ago this week, a young fruit seller called Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight outside the provincial headquarters of his home town in Tunisia, in protest against local police officials who had seized his cart and produce.Accounts of the 26-year-old’s shocking […]

What became of the strongmen whose rule sparked protest across the regionAt the end of 2010, dictators, kings and military rulers across the Arab world had little idea their oppressive governments were about to reach a critical point.During the months and years that followed, the region was shaken by a once-in-a-generation movement to overthrow the […]

The Voices of Tunisian Black Women, launched early this year, is a group offering a safe space for self-expression so that black women can speak out about the racial discrimination and abuse they face in Tunisian society.

As news of its uncertain future spreads, readers are flocking to the city’s oldest bookshop – but can it survive changing tastes and technology?Despite the pandemic, shoppers crowd the small bookshop at 18 Rue d’Angleterre. Many are here for the first time, squeezing their way between the stacks of books piled high along the walls of the bookshop said […]

As the French city of Nice mourns the three people murdered in a brutal knife attack on 29 October, the family of the suspected perpetrator, a 21-year-old Tunisian arrested at the scene, are still proclaiming his innocence.

Black people in the north African country suffer hardship and disadvantage, and many still carry the label of ‘liberated’ slavesMany within Tunisia greeted the news that 81-year-old Hamden Dali had won his two decade-long campaign to have “atig” removed from his name with little more than bemusement.But for Dali atig – meaning “liberated by” […]

Tunisian Brahim Aouissaoui, 21, gave no indication he was contemplating violenceThe 21-year-old Tunisian man who is accused of using a kitchen knife to kill three people in a church in Nice spoke to his family 12 hours before the attack, giving no indication he was contemplating violence.Brahim Aouissaoui grew up among eight sisters and two brothers in a […]

Case expected to open door for others wanting to drop ‘atig’ or ‘liberated by’ from their nameA court in Tunisia has allowed an 81-year-old man to remove a word from his name that marked him out as descended from slaves, in the country’s first ruling of its kind, his lawyer has said.Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, but critics say it has not […]

Human rights campaigners warn reinstating capital punishment ‘would be a huge step backwards’, as attack on young woman reignites debateThe brutal killing of a young woman has reignited a debate in Tunisia over capital punishment, with the country’s president suggesting an end to a decades-old moratorium on the death penalty.President Kais Saied told […]

A lack of awareness and ever-increasing competition among fishing boats threaten one of the sea’s most vital speciesThe temperature is cooling down in the fish market in Monastir, Tunisia. Still, the suffocating smell of the fish guts that have sat through the full force of the day’s heat hangs heavy in the air. The stallholders have left now, but on […]

Attackers with knives killed a Tunisian National Guard officer and wounded another on Sunday before three assailants were shot dead, the National Guard said, labelling the assault a "terrorist attack".