Here is Tunisia
Here are the democratic women
On 24 October 2025, the Tunisian authorities suspended, for one month, the activities of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), on the pretext of administrative breaches under Decree No. 88. Behind this decision, an attempt to silence a voice that for decades has embodied freedom, equality and justice — the voice of generations of women who have refused submission, silencing and marginalisation.
Since 1982, even before its official establishment, ATFD has filled the public space: its activists stood up against the Sabra and Shatila massacre; their voices rang out in court to oppose death sentences handed down to young people from working‑class neighbourhoods. Their struggles joined forces with labour movements: its pioneers founded the Working Women’s Committee within the Tunisian General Union of Labour (UGTT), then the Women’s Committee within the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH). Since then, the spread of feminist thought and the defence of women’s rights and freedoms have never ceased — in police stations, on hospital beds, in workshops of free thinking and frank debate, in schools and universities, in fields and farms, on the pages of newspapers, in books, studies and the media, in demonstrations and in the streets, at the heart of the Gafsa mining basin uprising and of a revolution that no injustice will erase.
ATFD has been — and remains — at the heart of all feminist and rights‑based struggles in Tunisia. It campaigned to advance the Personal Status Code; exposed the violence and discrimination inflicted on women agricultural workers; worked to lift Tunisia’s reservations to CEDAW; defended the principle of electoral parity; helped to draft Law No. 58 of 2017 on combating violence against women; bravely opened up the debate on equality in inheritance; helped free women’s speech against violence, harassment and discrimination; defended sexual and reproductive rights; fought for the adoption in 2021 of the law protecting domestic workers; and has consistently linked the feminist cause with social and democratic struggles — out of the conviction that there is no equality without freedom, and no freedom without democracy.
Yet President Kaïs Saïed’s power continues to target democratic women. It was not enough that its former president, Bochra Belhaj Hmida, was forced into exile and prosecuted on spurious charges with a sentence exceeding thirty years in prison; nor that activists were terrorised and many driven into exile; nor that rabid online pages demonise ATFD and level the worst accusations; nor that an administrative file remains open at the Prime Minister’s Office which — led by a woman — has made no effort to support women’s rights or protect them from killing, violence and impoverishment, instead devoting itself to restricting one of the few safe spaces where women take refuge. None of this is surprising from a power that has thrown women — politicians, journalists, trade unionists, municipal officials, anti‑racist activists and human rights defenders — behind bars.
But does this mean struggle should be suspended, or resilience frozen? Can the flame of freedom, equality and dignity be extinguished?
The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women is neither walls that can be shut nor a file that can be put on hold. It is the spirit of volunteerism and struggle against all forms of domination and injustice — patriarchal, capitalist, colonial or authoritarian. It is a school of feminist activism that has trained generations of militants; a bridge of Arab and global solidarity that has made Tunisia a beacon of the independent feminist movement. Closing its doors will not achieve the authorities’ aims nor silence its voice, for the association lives in every woman who said “no,” in every survivor who found safety and support within it, and in every young woman who continues along the path of freedom despite repression and fear.
Let us not miss the point: suspending ATFD is a thoroughly political decision that directly affects women’s lives and deprives hundreds of them of the legal, psychological and social support the association provided. It is an assault on all our rights to organise, to express ourselves and to human dignity. But ideas cannot be suspended; memory does not freeze; and the free voice will not be silenced. They may suspend activities, but they will not suspend our belonging to this edifice nor our belief in this dream that sustains us as much as we sustain it. We, democratic, united and steadfast feminists, will continue our struggle and will not suspend our hopes for a Tunisia of freedom, democracy, justice and equality.
Here is Tunisia, here is its beating pulse and its unflagging struggle: here are the democratic women.
