Every year on December 10, the world observes the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and coincides with the genocidal acts committed by the Israeli occupation army against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. These acts are considered as war crimes and crimes against humanity from an international law perspective.
This military hubris has revealed the bias of global hegemonic powers toward projects of genocide and colonization, dismissing all international human rights organizations and humanitarian demands to stop the war of extermination, and to commit to international law. This calls, more than ever, for confronting the state of impunity practiced by global hegemonic forces against the human rights protection system and its institutional and legislative components.
This hegemony now encompasses all aspects of life, by generalizing the model of neoliberal economic control over nations, especially those in the global South. This has created a global situation dominated by manifestations of poverty, diseases, and various forms of economic and social vulnerability.
On the national level, Tunisia is witnessing a dangerous roll back towards tightening restrictions on rights and freedoms. This is evident through the resurgence of oppressive policies and the use of the state apparatus to suppress political opposition, as well as the enforcement of a unilateral authoritarian vision embodied by President Kais Saied. Meanwhile, the economic situation continues to deteriorate, affecting wide segments of society. Public services, including health, transportation, and education, are in a state of decay as the current administration continues to evade its social commitments and persists in maintaining outdated economic and developmental approaches.
In the context of these international and national situations, shaped by hegemony and dominance policies, our organization reaffirms its commitment to defend peoples’ right to access human rights. These rights have become subject to manipulation, discrimination, and various forms of violation, and transgression. Consequently, it is for us paramount to express:
- Unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance in their steadfastness against the Zionist occupation army. The organization calls on all free people around the world to intensify pressure in all forms on the occupying state and its allies, to halt the aggression and enforce international law that clearly criminalize the ongoing genocide committed by the occupation army against the entire population.
- Its commitment to enforcing the human rights system as a fundamental safeguard for people against tyranny, hubris, and global neoliberal hegemony.
- Its adherence to the struggle against the return of the authoritarian rule to our country, regardless of Its rhetoric and justifications, and the immediate release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, especially the victims of Decree 54, which has been weaponized to interfere with the freedom of press, expression, and publication.
- Calls for all justice, freedom and rights advocates and militants to ensure a greater civic and citizen mobilization against the attempts of the Tunisian authorities to eliminate any form of public debate, particularly by constraining the associations activities via the modification of the decree-law 88 which is an attempt to justify the closing of civic space and political censorship of civic activists.
