Germany and International IDEA work together to advance the protection of fundamental rights in Tunisia

International IDEA and the Government of Germany signed on 11 March 2019, a grant agreement for the implementation of the project “Working Towards a New Era in the Protection of Fundamental Rights” to be implemented in Tunisia.  The Government of Germany has supported programmatic initiatives for several years in Tunisia. This new 960.000 Euros project, funded through a mechanism of the Federal Foreign Office at the Ministry of General Affairs of Germany, will have a duration of three years.

The signing ceremony was attended by the Secretary-General of International IDEA, Yves Leterme, the Charge d’Affaires at the Embassy of Germany to the Kingdom of Sweden, Manfred Schüeler, and the Ambassador of Republic of Tunisia to the Kingdom of Sweden, Ambassador Moez Mehdi Mahmoudi. Also in attendance were International IDEA's Senior Adviser for Member States and External Relations, Petra Auer-Himberg, the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General, Adina Trunk; and Resource Mobilization Officer, Luis J. Consuegra.

This project aims to contribute to the improvement of the protection of fundamental rights in Tunisia by supporting the legal community (judges, lawyers and academics), public officials (parliamentarians, cabinet ministers, ministry officials, and local government officials) and civil society organizations in their efforts to align their working methods with the 2014 Constitution’s framework for the protection of fundamental rights.

The project will contribute to clarifying the utility and scope of proportionality, both through a discussion of its merits in the absolute and through a literal reading and interpretation of Article 49 of the 2014 Tunisian Constitution. The project will lead to a number of outputs, including numerous capacity building sessions, practitioners’ manuals, recommendations papers, multimedia productions, and the creation of a working group of practitioners and experts, which will be institutionalized and used to impact the public discussion on proportionality well after the project ends.

This project will be implemented from International IDEA’s Office in Tunisia, which has been supporting projects in the broader MENA region since 2011, under the overall coordination of the Africa and West Asia regional programme.