The events began when Mohamed Bouazizi, a year old Tunisian street vendor, set himself afire on 17 December , in protest of the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation that was inflicted on him by a municipal official.
This act became the catalyst for mass demonstrations and riots throughout Tunisia in protest of social and political issues in the country. Anger and violence intensified following Bouazizi's death on 4 January , ultimately leading longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down on 14 January , after 23 years in power.
International Tunisian organizations, such as the Tunisian Community Center in the US, supported the protesters' aims toward democracy as well, in addition to TCC's efforts to freeze Ben Ali's assets abroad.
The demonstrations were precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were the result of action by police and security forces against demonstrators. Labour unions were said to be an integral part of the protests. The protests inspired similar actions throughout the Arab world; sparking the Egyptian revolution in which Egypt's longtime president Hosni Mubarak was ousted, Libya — where a civil war broke out, the Yemeni Revolution, in which longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to resign and further protests in Algeria, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, Mauritania, Pakistan, and Syria, — as well as elsewhere in the wider North Africa and Middle East.
In response to the demonstrations, Ben Ali declared a state of emergency in the country, dissolved the government on January 14, , and promised new legislative elections within six months. But on that same day Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi went on state television to say he was assuming power in Tunisia. Unconfirmed news reports, citing unidentified government sources in Tunisia, said that the President had left the country.
Ghannouchi based his speech on Article 56 of the Tunisian constitution. However, the head of Tunisia's Constitutional Court, Fethi Abdennadher, confirmed that Ghannouchi violated the constitution, as Article 56 was not applicable to the circumstances and required a President. Article 57 of the constitution stated that the President of the Parliament should take the executive power and organize an election in 45 to 60 days. Consequently, Fouad Mebazaa became acting President following the Constitutional Court's interpretation of the situation and the Constitution.
Protests continued in Tunisia to call for banning of the ruling party and the eviction of all its members from the transitional government formed by Mohammed Ghannouchi. Eventually the new government gave in to the demands and a new prime minister Beji Caid-Essebsi was appointed by the acting president on Thursday March 3, Two of the first actions made after the appointment of the new government were the decision of the Tunis court to ban the ex-ruling party RCD and to confiscate all its resources, and a decree by the minister of the interior banning the "political police" including what has been known as the state security special forces which were used to intimidate and persecute political activists.
On 3 March , the president announced that elections to a Constituent Assembly would be held on 23 October The constituent assembly elections took place as scheduled with international and internal observers declaring it free and fair. The Ennahda Movement, formerly banned under the Ben Ali regime, won a plurality of 90 seats out of a total of On 12 December , former dissident and veteran human rights activist Moncef Marzouki was elected as president of Tunisia by a ruling coalition dominated by the moderate Islamist Nahda party, and sworn in on 13 December Marzouki had previously been imprisoned and exiled for years for opposing former President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.
At the time of his election, Marzouki was head of the secular center-left Congress for the Republic party. The Islamist Nahda party also "won the largest share of seats in an assembly charged with appointing a transitional government and drafting a new constitution. The new Constitution of Tunisia guarantees rights for women, and states that the President's religion "shall be Islam.
Tunisia has a diverse economy, ranging from agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and petroleum products, to tourism. The agricultural sector stands for The industrial sector is mainly made up of clothing and footwear manufacturing, production of car parts, and electric machinery.
Tunisia was in ranked the most competitive economy in Africa and the 40th in the world by the World Economic Forum. Tunisia has managed to attract many international companies such as Airbus and Hewlett-Packard. The European Union remains Tunisia's first trading partner, currently accounting for Tunisia was the first Mediterranean country to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union, in July , although even before the date of entry came into force, Tunisia started dismantling tariffs on bilateral EU trade.
Tunisia finalised the tariffs dismantling for industrial products in and therefore was the first Mediterranean country to enter in a free trade area with EU.
Tunisia also attracted large Persian Gulf investments especially from United Arab Emirates the largest include:. In , a total of 13, GWh was produced in the country. The main field is El Bourma. Tunisia has plans for two nuclear power stations, to be operational by Both facilities are projected to produce — MW. France is set to become an important partner in Tunisia's nuclear power plans, having signed an agreement, along with other partners, to deliver training and technology.
The Desertec project is a large-scale energy project aimed at installing solar power panels in northern Africa, with a power line connection between it and southern Europe. Tunisia will be a part of this project, but exactly how it may benefit from this remains to be seen. The governorates are divided into "delegations" or "districts" mutamadiyat , and further subdivided into municipalities shaykhats and sectors imadats.
Tunisia's military spending is 1. The army is responsible for national defence and also internal security. It is bordered by Algeria on the west and Libya on the south east. An abrupt southward turn of the Mediterranean coast in northern Tunisia gives the country two distinctive Mediterranean coasts, west-east in the north, and north-south in the east. Though it is relatively small in size, Tunisia has great environmental diversity due to its north-south extent.
Its east-west extent is limited. Differences in Tunisia, like the rest of the Maghreb, are largely north-south environmental differences defined by sharply decreasing rainfall southward from any point. The Dorsal, the eastern extension of the Atlas Mountains, runs across Tunisia in a northeasterly direction from the Algerian border in the west to the Cape Bon peninsula in the east. North of the Dorsal is the Tell, a region characterized by low, rolling hills and plains, again an extension of mountains to the west in Algeria.
In the Khroumerie, the northwestern corner of the Tunisian Tell, elevations reach 1, metres 3, ft and snow occurs in winter. The Sahel, a broadening coastal plain along Tunisia's eastern Mediterranean coast, is among the world's premier areas of olive cultivation. Inland from the Sahel, between the Dorsal and a range of hills south of Gafsa, are the Steppes.
Much of the southern region is semi-arid and desert. Tunisia has a coastline 1, kilometres mi long. In maritime terms, the country claims a contiguous zone of 24 nautical miles Tunisia's climate is temperate in the north, with mild rainy winters and hot, dry summers. The south of the country is desert. The terrain in the north is mountainous, which, moving south, gives way to a hot, dry central plain.
The south is semiarid, and merges into the Sahara. A series of salt lakes, known as chotts or shatts , lie in an east-west line at the northern edge of the Sahara, extending from the Gulf of Gabes into Algeria. The lowest point is Shatt al Gharsah, at 17 metres 56 ft below sea level and the highest is Jebel ech Chambi, at 1, metres 5, ft. Tunisian Arabic, like other Maghrebi dialects, has a vocabulary mostly Arabic, with significant Berber substrates.
There is also a long-established Jewish community in the country, the history of the Jews in Tunisia going back some 2, years. In the Jewish population was an estimated ,, but by only about 1, remained.
The first people known to history in what is now Tunisia were the Berbers. There was a continuing inflow of nomadic Arab tribes from Arabia. According to Matthew Carr, "As many as eighty thousand Moriscos settled in Tunisia, most of them in and around the capital, Tunis, which still contains a quarter known as Zuqaq al-Andalus, or Andalusia Alley.
Tunisia's health system is effective; life expectancy at birth in was The constitution declares Islam as the official state religion and requires the President to be Muslim. Aside from the president, Tunisians enjoy a significant degree of religious freedom, a right enshrined and protected in its constitution, which guarantees the freedom to practice one's religion.
The country has a secular culture that encourages acceptance of other religions and religious freedom. With regards to the freedom of Muslims, the Tunisian government has restricted the wearing of Islamic head scarves hijab in government offices and it discourages women from wearing them on public streets and public gatherings. The government believes the hijab is a "garment of foreign origin having a partisan connotation". There were reports that the Tunisian police harassed men with "Islamic" appearance such as those with beards , detained them, and sometimes compelled men to shave their beards off.
In , the former Tunisian president declared that he would "fight" the hijab, which he refers to as "ethnic clothing". Individual Tunisians are tolerant of religious freedom and generally do not inquire about a person's personal beliefs. The bulk of Tunisians belong to the Maliki School of Sunni Islam and their mosques are easily recognizable by square minarets.
However, the Turks brought with them the teaching of the Hanafi School during the Ottoman rule which still survives among the Turkish descended families today, their mosques traditionally have octagonal minarets. Tunisia has a sizable Christian community of around 25, adherents, mainly Catholics 22, and to a lesser degree Protestants. Berber Christians continued to live in Tunisia up until the early 15th century.
Judaism is the country's third largest religion with 1, members. One-third of the Jewish population lives in and around the capital. The remainder lives on the island of Djerba, with 39 synagogues, and where the Jewish community dates back 2, years.
Many Jews consider it a pilgrimage site, with celebrations taking place there once every year. In fact, Tunisia along with Morocco has been said to be the Arab countries most accepting of their Jewish populations. Arabic is the official language, and Tunisian Arabic, known as Derja, is the local, vernacular variety of Arabic and is used by the public.
There is also a small minority of speakers of Shelha, a Berber language. Due to the former French occupation, French also plays a major role in the country, despite having no official status.
It is widely used in education e. Most Tunisians are able to speak it. Due to Tunisia's proximity to Italy and the large number of Italian Tunisians, Italian is understood and spoken by a small part of the Tunisian population.
A basic education for children between the ages of 6 and 16 has been compulsory since Tunisia ranked 17th in the category of "quality of the [higher] educational system" and 21st in the category of "quality of primary education" in The Global Competitiveness Report , released by The World Economic Forum.
While children generally acquire Tunisian Arabic at home, when they enter school at age 6, they are taught to read and write in Standard Arabic.
He has faced considerable criticism for his conservative views on homosexuality, women's rights and capital punishment, which was suspended in The previous president, Beji Caid Essebsi, died in office in July, after winning the country's first free presidential election in December Parliament approved a new government led by Hichem Mechichi in September , the third administration since elections the previous October.
Mr Mechichi's ministers are technocrats free of affiliation to political parties, tasked with reforming public finances at a time of economic crisis and political instability.
The new prime minister, a lawyer by training, served as interior minister in the outgoing government. The Tunisian media now enjoy greater freedom than before the popular revolt.
Some key dates in Tunisia's history:. Circa BC - Phoenicians settle the north African coast. The city of Carthage, near the site of present-day Tunis, becomes a naval power. France controls economic and foreign affairs; Tunisia is a French protectorate from Tunisian government.
Despite its relatively small size that is about the size of the US state of Wisconsin, Tunisia's north-south extent lends it great environmental diversity. The country has a moderate relief.
As observed on the physical map above, the Tunisian Dorsal is a mountain range that runs in a southwest-northeast direction from Tunisia's border with Algeria in the west to the Cape Bon peninsula in the east.
This mountain is an extension of the Saharan Atlas Mountains. Further north from the Tunisian Dorsal, the mountains of the Northern Tell that include the Kroumirie Mountains in the northwest and the Mogods running along the northern coastline can be found. This valley features a series of ancient lake basins and is the country's most fertile grain-producing land. They are cut by mountains running north to south. As we go further south, there is a series of depressions called chott.
Many intermittent rivers flowing through the country end up in these chotts. Most of the southern part of the country is a sandy desert and much of it is part of the Sahara Desert's Sand Sea, also called the Grand Erg Oriental. Most of the wadis here remain dry all year round and hence, access to water is a major concern here. Tunisia also has several islands. The Djerba Island marked on the map above is North Africa's largest island. Mount Chambi 1, M is the highest point in the country.
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