Controversy over Tunisian youth initiative

2008-04-24

The Tunisian government has yielded the floor to the country's youth to express their desires and criticisms, opening regional forums and a national website to receive and record their wishes. While some hope this is a step towards change, many Tunisians fear little will come of the programme.

By Jamel Arfaoui for Magharebia in Tunis – 24/04/08

[Jamel Arfaoui] 2008 has been declared the year of dialogue with youth in Tunisia, where a national website has allowed youths to submit their concerns and desires.

One month after the launch of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's youth dialogue initiative, young people across the country continue to submit their demands and vision for the future. Demands range from questions about the unemployment of university graduates, to calls for organizing protests, to total rejection of dialogue.

Ben Ali declared on March 20th – on the occasion of Independence and Youth Day – that 2008 will be the "year of dialogue" with youth, ordering the creation of forums for young people in Tunisia and abroad.

Programme co-ordinators expect the first stage of dialogue to conclude in June, to be followed by detailed evaluations and the preparation of a charter that will serve as the basis for a national strategy for youth.

Mourad Bouattour, a Tunisian in his twenties, told Magharebia he felt the authorities began listening to the nation's youth because they are "threatened with several social and economic problems" which, he said, carry the risk of "throwing them into the unknown, and perhaps extremism".

Another young man, Mohsen Mathlouthi, wondered if the demands they submit will be implemented. "Did they finally start listening to us seriously?" he asked. "I think they have no other option."

Social scientist Mongi Saidani expressed doubt to Magharebia that the dialogue will yield any results. "We are lying to ourselves when we say that we are holding dialogue with the youth," he said. "We haven't made our youth accustomed to dialogue in the first place; relations in our society are usually vertical."

"We know our society quite well," Saidani continued. "We can see a state of indifference, which sometimes amounts to disappointment. If we want to change the rules of the game, then we have to give our youth... the freedom to create and innovate, and we have to let them think freely."

Saidani also said the organisers were likely selected in such a way as to achieve specific government goals, only allowing specific people and views to be heard.

According to the programme's official website, the dialogue is aimed at all categories across the republic. It targets three million men and women between 15 and 29 years old. The website, launched last month, calls for ideas "that would enable us as youth to have greater participation in political life and in association activities, and in all fields of public life."

Political participation among young Tunisians is already low. In January 2007, two official studies revealed that 72% of Tunisian youth are averse to marriage and the political process. Respondents said they are not rigorous about following local press, and the majority asserted their desire for openness to the world.

One factor in the low participation is fear of being pursued by the government. On February 27th, the International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners said that the number of Tunisians arrested for political reasons was in the hundreds.

According to Naser Eddine ben Hdid, a journalist with opposition newspaper Mouwatinoun, the concerns of youth are valid, but he criticised many young people for their lack of "patience and persistence; something that renders education, in most cases, into a means rather than a value and culture."

He said it is important to look at young people by "what they have inherited from the older generation, where survival... is based on expulsion, exclusion, and domination. Tunisian youth has to change this reality."

This programme is not a first for Tunisia; authorities conducted similar initiatives in 1996 and 2000 under the slogans "Tunisia listens to its youth" and "Youth of Dialogue are Partners in Decision."