On this National Women’s Day, one question stands out : What was the point of the 2011 revolution if the very women who fought for it and continued to fight to see its promises fulfilled, are now behind bars or in exile?
Less than a week ago, political opponent Chayma Issa was once again summoned by Tunisia’s anti-terrorism unit marking at least the third prosecution against her in almost three years. In December 2023, a military court handed her a one-year suspended prison sentence on charges of ‘insulting the President of the Republic,’ ‘inciting disobedience,’ and ‘spreading rumors.’ On April 19, 2025, Issa was sentenced to 18 years in prison, without immediate enforcement, in the so-called ‘conspiracy against state security’ case more than two years after her initial arrest in February 2023. She had been released in July of that same year. In the same case, feminist activist Bochra Belhaj Hamida and former Member of Parliament, currently in exile, was sentenced in absentia to 33 years in prison.
Bochra and Chayma are not the only women who have been prosecuted for their political and civic activism. Abir Moussi, Saadia Mosbah, Sonia Dahmani, Sherifa Riahi, these are just a few names on a much longer list.
A Primary Target of a Calculated Crackdown
Violence against women in politics is not just an expression of misogyny, it is a deliberate political strategy. It is a way to silence, punish, and erase the women who dare to challenge power. Nearly 15 years after Tunisia’s revolution, the repression of women activists is not an anomaly; it is a warning sign of a democracy in retreat.
Tunisian women who dared to participate in public life are the primary target of a calculated crackdown. They are not simply harassed; they are systematically silenced, detained, and sent to exile. At this very moment, many sit in prison, charged with “defamation”, or more serious accusations that are punishable by the death penalty, like “conspiracy against the state”. Others have fled the country for their safety, while some have withdrawn from public life altogether.
Those are not isolated incidents. They are part of a deliberate anti-gender movement that is intertwined with the broader authoritarian turn in Tunisia. The rollback of women’s rights is not a side effect of democratic decline, but a central feature.
For decades, Tunisia was praised as a leader in women’s rights in the Arab world, a legacy of state feminism where gender equality was promoted, albeit within the limits of state control. That model has now shattered. Today, the state is not just failing to protect women; it is actively targeting them. The government’s rhetoric paints feminists as elite, foreign-backed, and detached from “real” national concerns. The 2011 gender parity law has been scrapped, slashing women’s representation in parliament from 31% in 2014 to only 16% today. Laws designed to protect women, like Law 58 on gender-based violence, remain unenforced, fueling a rise in domestic abuse and femicide—cases that have quadrupled in the past five years, with 25 recorded in 2023 and 15 already documented by August 2024. Even symbolic milestones have been hollowed out. When Tunisia appointed Najla Bouden as its first female prime minister, it was hailed as a breakthrough. But in reality, she nurtured state misogyny, going so far as to repeal policies that ensured gender parity in senior government appointments.
This is how anti-democratic forces consolidate power by pushing women out of public life, weakening democratic institutions, and weaponizing culture to justify repression.
The Global Anti-Gender Movement
Tunisia’s trajectory is not unique. Across the world, from the United States to Italy and France, we are witnessing a coordinated anti-gender movement, one that feeds off populist, patriarchal, and capitalist ideologies. The far right has made feminism and LGBTQIA+ rights a prime target, framing them as threats to national identity, conventional family structures, and religious values.
The logic is clear: By attacking gender equality, these movements reinforce hierarchies of power that benefit authoritarian regimes and economic elites alike. They shift blame for economic and social crises onto women, feminists and minorities, rather than the political and financial systems that perpetuate inequality.
In the past, when repression tightened its grip, activists turned to international solidarity as a lifeline. But today, that safety net has unraveled. Politicians, activists and feminists are standing alone, facing escalating crackdowns with little to no global support. The traditional toolbox of advocacy—policy recommendations, human rights monitoring and diplomatic pressure, feels not just inadequate, but almost naive in a world where global powers are not only complicit but actively reinforcing authoritarian regimes.
Acting on policy is no longer possible, as we are trying to propose solutions within a system that is itself the perpetrator of violence. How do you demand justice from a government that actively weaponizes the legal system against women? How do you engage with a regime that instrumentalizes the very institutions meant to protect citizens—courts, police, parliament—to silence critics? This is not a failure of governance; it is governance working exactly as intended to suppress dissent. This raises uncomfortable but necessary questions: Can we still talk about policy solutions when the issue is not policy failure but deliberate repression? Is it possible to push for legal reform when the law itself has been turned into a tool of oppression?
Democracy for Sale and Everyone’s Looking Away
Diplomacy has also stopped working. Governments that once claimed to champion human rights have gone silent, not out of ignorance, but out of calculated disinterest. They see exactly what is happening, yet democracy and human rights have slid down their list of priorities, replaced by security pacts, migration deals, and economic interests. The trade-off is clear: autocrats are free to jail their critics, dismantle civil society, and silence dissent as long as they keep their borders closed and their economies open for business.
This shift is evident in Europe’s approach to Tunisia. The European Union and its Member States, which once positioned themselves as global defenders of democracy, have turned a blind eye to Tunisia’s authoritarian slide because they are more interested in securing migration agreements with the Tunisian government. In exchange for preventing African migrants from reaching European shores, Tunisia’s regime gets a free pass on political repression. The UK is no different, as evidenced by the recent security ‘deal’ that was signed to curb migration without no reference to the rights of people on the move under international law. Western leaders shake hands with autocrats while activists and opposition figures rot in prison.
Reporting on human rights is not as effective as it used to be. In Tunisia, many activists have stopped relying on traditional human rights advocacy, recognizing that those who once positioned themselves as defenders of rights have chosen political convenience over principle. The past 15 months have exposed the deep contradictions of the global order—Western governments preach democracy yet remain silent as activists, journalists, and opposition figures are crushed. Their complicity in the genocide in Gaza has shattered any illusion of credibility. How can we expect them to defend women’s rights in Tunisia when they fail to uphold human rights elsewhere? The selective and self-serving application of human rights has eroded faith in international mechanisms, leaving activists with little more than empty statements of concern.
Rebuilding transnational feminist solidarity
These challenges are not abstract, they are deeply felt by those fighting for justice. And yet, despite these barriers, we cannot afford to retreat. The answer lies in rebuilding transnational feminist solidarity in a manner that speaks to people rather than governments, exposing the hypocrisy of global powers, and demanding that women’s rights remain at the heart of the fight for democracy.
If democracy continues to be for sale to the highest bidder—whether for migration control, trade, or military interests—then none of us are safe. Black feminist thinkers like Angela Davis remind us that true solidarity is not granted by institutions but forged in shared struggle against intersecting systems of oppression—patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism, and state violence. Historically, women’s movements have never relied on the state to grant them justice; instead, they have built alliances across borders, from Black feminists in the U.S. supporting South African women under apartheid, to the Third World Women’s Alliance linking struggles from Harlem to Vietnam, to Indigenous and Palestinian feminists today rejecting the NGO-ization of resistance in favor of movement-centered solidarity.
Tunisian feminists cannot depend on the same international mechanisms that have failed time and again; instead, we must create direct alliance with feminist movements outside the state apparatus, reject state-centered advocacy in favor of movement-centered resistance, and build transnational feminist networks that do not rely on Western funding or approval. The future of feminist resistance lies not in diplomacy or hollow declarations but in radical, intersectional, and borderless solidarity.