Volume 16, Issue 1 -

This article looks at the human rights protection in transitional post-uprising Tunisia, from 2011 to 2017, offering insights into the willingness to both protect human rights and build capacity in Tunisia. It focuses on the establishment of an adequate legal framework in Tunisia, with particular attention being paid to the constitution-making process and, on the establishment, the strengthening of certain institutional capacities, such as the constitutional court and the Truth and Dignity Commission. The article first gives a brief historical overview of the human rights situation in Tunisia. This is followed by an analysis of the willingness and capacity to protect human rights in post-uprising transitional Tunisia, in both the 2011–2014 and 2014–2017 periods.This article is based on evidence from a series of semi-structured interviews I conducted with the key political actors from various political parties, and actors from NGOs working on human rights, during field research in Tunisia in October-November 2017, supplemented by secondary literature.

The common method of the traditional Islamic Jurisprudence in seminaries has been challenged by Ayatollah Yousef Saanei, one of the ten prominent Iranian Grand Ayatollahs. Saanei is well known for attempting to institutionalize a new method of Ijtihad, known as searching Ijtihad, which seeks to reconsider the common mode of understanding religious texts and jurisprudential inferences. His experiences of observing the systematic ineffectiveness and discrimination in popular jurisprudence regarding women’s rights, family, and religious minorities persuaded him to take scientific action in revising the common jurisprudential method. In the present paper, the necessity of revising the common jurisprudential approach in seminaries from Saanei’s point of view is firstly studied. Afterwards, the foundations, principles, and methods of modern Saanei’s Ijtihad will be investigated to determine the structure and foundations of his jurisprudential method and evaluate its impact on resolving the contradictions between traditional perceptions of religion and human rights.

The paper provides valuable accounts of the general concepts underlying privacy law in both cultures, and great detail about the impact of criminal procedure and evidence rules on privacy in reality rather than legal theory. It is, in this sense, a “realist” approach to privacy, particularly but not exclusively in relation to sexual activity. The distinction which the article draws between the frameworks within which privacy is conceived broadly, self-determination and limited government in the USA, protection of one’s persona in Europe, and reputation in Islamic law. However, the paper argues that Western and Islamic traditions share many of the same concepts about the tests to be applied when deciding how far an intrusion on privacy is justified and value many of the same interests in doing so. At the same time, it will highlight those areas where they differ which are not ones of crucial importance when deciding, for example, what are the proper limits on mass surveillance. Indirectly, this shows that even though there may be stark differences between the cultures on some points, there is enough agreement on some aspects of privacy to make comparisons in relation to issues such as mass surveillance.