North Africa Round-up

  • Protests have continued in Tunis, in the midst of political tensions between Prime Minister Mechichi and President Saïed and reports of a poisoning attempt on the President

Read more on jordantimes jeuneafrique lapresse

  • Meherzia Laabidi, current Assembly member for the Ennahdha Movement, and first Deputy Speaker of the Tunisian Constituent Assembly, passed away on 22 January. In addition to her role in Tunisian politics, she was also an active member and leader of international organisations including Religions for Peace and the Global Women of Faith Network.

Read more on leconomistemaghrebin and more information on her work here

  • The Algerian press is reporting renewed tensions between Polisario and Morocco since the US’s unilateral move to recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in December.

Read more on elwatan

  • In what has been described as a “Franco-French affair” but has obviously also received coverage in the French-language Algerian press, Benjamin Stora delivered his commissioned report on Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la Guerre d’Algérie to President Macron. The report is available here

Read more on middleeasteye lexpressiondz liberte-algerie elwatan

10 years since Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s flight to Jeddah

14 January 2021 marked 10 years since Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s flight to Jeddah. Despite strict lockdown orders imposed to prevent long-expected protests, people in Tunis’s working-class neighbourhoods have taken to the streets since the anniversary of Ben Ali’s flight in January.
This anniversary has been marked by a flurry of online conferences and publications, some of which are highlighted below. The Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) has made three conferences/interviews around the topic available through their Maghrib in Past and Present podcast:

Elsewhere, Mounir Saidani and Thierry Brésillon explore hopes of a new revolution through large-scale popular movements, and fears of a counter-revolution by the state’s elites, while Khdadija Mohsen-Finan and Olfa Mamoun wonder about the legacies of the revolution.

Widening its focus to the wider region, the latest special issue of Confluences Méditerrannée brings together research on “revolutions and counter-revolutions” focusing on political transformations in Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Lybia.

The DREAM research project (DRafting and Enacting the Revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean. In Search for Dignity – from the 1950’s until today) has made their recently published L’Esprit de la révolte: Archives et des révolutions arabes (edited by Leyla Dakhli) available on their website. Contributors Kmar Bendana and Elena Chiti discuss the project and questions around the Tunisia revolution and its archives on Le Cours de l’Histoire.