Tunisian Social Observatory
May 2025 Report:
Social mobilization on the rise Occupational demands at the forefront of protests
Protest movements continued to intensify in May 2025. Based on the sample studied, 451 social movements were observed, compared with 422 movements during April, bringing the number of protest movements to 2008 since the start of the year.
During the first five months of the year, social actors have not changed their areas of action or their demands. As in previous months, the social movements documented and monitored by the Tunisian Social Observatory team focused on two main areas: the right to decent work guaranteeing a minimum level of human dignity and a decent income, and the right to civil and political action.
The movements demanded the assignment of unemployed graduates, the right to employment for unemployed graduates, the settlement of professional situations and the end of precarious work, the payment of contributions and wages, tenure, the activation of current agreements, the improvement of working conditions, the adoption of the principle of transparency in promotions, administrative hierarchies and transfers, etc. Protests linked to civil and political demands accounted for 74% of all social movements and protests in May, while protests linked to civil and political demands accounted for 16.63%, and called for the release of lawyer and former judge Ahmed Souab, denounced the trials of workers and civil labor activists, and were based on opposition to the judicial decision and rejection of the arbitrary transfer of prisoners in what is known as the “conspiracy affair”.
During the month of May, the Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine continued to organize actions denouncing the violations of the Israeli aggression against Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories. In the same month, actions took place as part of the coordination of the Resilience Convoy organized to break the siege of the Palestinian people, during which the call for the criminalization of normalization and the boycott of certain institutions associated with brands suspected of involvement in the financing and laundering of genocide was renewed, and the call for legislation to criminalize normalization was reiterated.
May 2025 saw the return of environmental movements. The protest movement against pollution in the governorate of Gabes, which demanded the dismantling of polluting units and the halting of the green hydrogen project that was to be installed there, was the most striking and mobilized, and saw broad citizen participation and the presence of civil society and sports activists. The movement also saw a number of restrictions which resulted in the intervention of security forces and the arrest of a number of demonstrators, three of whom were given prison warrants and, at the request of their lawyers, continued to be pursued at liberty.
The revisions to the Labor Code, particularly with regard to the abolition of the subcontracting system, have raised a number of questions in various labor circles, due to the lack of sufficient information on the details and mechanisms of implementation. This law will be a real test for the state, given that it is the biggest consumer of vulnerable labor such as the subcontracting and other systems and is also responsible for monitoring and following up the extent to which the applications of this law are being complied with.
Contract teachers and workers under and over the age of 45 continued their actions, demanding the conclusion of the process of regularizing their professional situation, which is subject to incomprehensible delays and procrastination on the part of the official structures and ministries to which they report.
Meanwhile, in May, the staff of the International Center for the Advancement of People with Disabilities staged a sit-in in front of the House of People’s Representatives, followed by a hunger strike for three of them: Emna Zouidi, Amal Dhafouli and Mohamed Tahir Warfalli. For 23 days, despite their precarious state of health, the strikers refused to lift their hunger strike until their professional status had been settled.
As summer approaches, the thirst movement resumes, demanding an end to frequent cuts in drinking water and the right to irrigation water, and demanding that the dates of sudden cuts be communicated in advance.
The number of professional movements and demands for employment, settlement of situations and improvement of working conditions reached 334 movements, while the number of movements related to civil rights was 75, with the rest of the movements divided between demands for the right to water, the right to development, a healthy environment, the right to security, insurance and protection, and the right to basic public services for citizens, such as transport, health, education, price control and a decent life. As in previous months, from a gender perspective, social movements were predominantly mixed, with 399 movements registered in mixed form, and 43 movements organized by men and 9 movements organized by women.
The forms of social movements varied during May, with the sit-in adopted as a protest method in 178 movements, and was linked to the demand for activation of outstanding agreements, tenure, settlement of professional status and improvement of working conditions, while representatives of the University of Basic Education in more than one region held sit-ins inside the headquarters of regional delegations to ensure transparency in promotions, control of vacancies and transport. Flight attendants staged a sit-in at Tunisair headquarters after being sent back to forced unemployment, and vocational training employees and managers at the headquarters of the National Vocational Training Agency staged a sit-in to improve wages for all employees, and the International Center for the Advancement of People with Disabilities was the highest-profile and longest sit-in during the month of May 2025.
The social actor opted for peaceful vigils and marches in 147 actions, and turned to hunger strikes in 33 actions, reflecting the loss of hope and the level of escalation that amounts to adopting the “battle of the empty stomach” in order to achieve its demands. Among the hunger strikes recorded were the hunger strike by the staff of the International Center for the Advancement of People with Disabilities, which lasted 23 days, the hunger strike announced by journalist Chadha hajj Mubarak to protest against her deteriorating state of health, and the hunger strike by politician Jawhar Ben Mubarak to protest against the fact that a year has passed since he and several other political figures were detained in connection with the “conspiracy” case .
The social actor used statements and appeals through the media and social networks to express his anger in 55 actions, resorted to wearing a red badge on 9 occasions, blocked a road, disrupted an activity and organized a march to the capital as part of his attempts to make his voice heard and express his rejection or anger.
Employees were the main players in the movement observed in May 2025, monopolizing 27% of all documented protests (126 actions), followed by professors, teachers and trade unions, who took part in 107 protest actions. Next came workers, who took part in 82 actions, civil society activists, present in 36 actions, and residents, who protested in 35 actions. Unemployed graduates, farmers, journalists, cab drivers, doctors, parents, migrants, students and health service workers were also among those who took action in May.
The month of May maintained the same order of geographical distribution of movements recorded by the Tunisian Social Observatory during the month of April, where Tunis remained at the top of the governorates in terms of intensity of social movements by recording 129 movements, and for the second month, the governorate of Tozeur ranked second with 42 movements, followed by Monastir and Gabes with 28 movements each. Sidi Bouzid ranked fifth with 23 actions, Mahdia with 22, Kasserine, Kairouan and Ben Arous with 19, Bizerte and Sfax with 18, Sousse with 17 and Gafsa with 15. Ariana had the lowest protest rate, with two protests.
Around 42% of requests from social actors were addressed to the Presidency of the Government or the Presidency of the Republic, while 17.74% concerned the Ministry of Education and around 10% the employer, with the remainder addressed to regional administrations, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Agriculture, the national company for the exploitation and distribution of water, the Ministry of Health, the authorities in charge of transport, security and justice.
Based on the sample studied, we recorded 11 cases of suicide and suicide attempts in May, including one in Tunisian prisons, which can be seen as a form of protest and discontent. The suicides and attempted suicides concerned different ages, with the team following the suicide of a schoolgirl from the Bolhnach area in the Tala delegation of the Kasserine governorate. 6 cases among young people, including a theater teacher from the governorate of El Kef, an 18-year-old girl from El Hamma, governorate of Gabès, a sailor who immolated himself in the port of Jerzouna, governorate of Bizerte, and a young man from Al Aala, governorate of Kairouan. There were 2 adults and 2 elderly people, including an 82-year-old man from Beja. The majority of those who committed suicide were men (8), while the month recorded 3 cases of suicide and attempted suicide among women.
Tunis saw three suicides, while the remaining cases were spread across the governorates of Kasserine, Kairouan, Kef, Beja, Bizerte, Tozeur, Gabès and Gafsa, with one case each. Residential space was the main setting for suicide during May, with 7 suicides, while the remainder were split between prison space and agricultural land, and 2 cases were recorded in a public space.
The Tunisian Social Observatory team continues to document cases of violence, each time taking more extreme and vengeful forms, where a young man in the Mahdia governorate poured petrol over his mother after a family dispute, and in the Deguach delegation in the Tozeur governorate, a dispute between a group of young men resulted in the death of one of them, and a student set fire to his school in the Manzel Bouzelfa delegation in the governorate of Nabeul, and in the same context, students set fire to their school’s warehouse in the Tajerouine delegation in the governorate of El Kef.
The month also saw cases of harassment and sexual assault of minors in the middle of a school in the delegation of Hajeb El-Ayoun in the governorate of Kairouan, and the same phenomenon was observed in the governorate of Tunis, during which an adult lured children with sweets and assaulted them in his house…
Violence is closely divided between public and private spaces, and the street, the home and educational institutions represented the settings that witnessed acts of violence during the month of May 2025.
The majority of perpetrators were men, accounting for 92.31% of aggressors. The remainder were women. As for the victims of violence, neither sex was excluded from the recorded cases of violence. 46.15% of victims of violence were women, 30.77% men and 23.08% both men and women.
The month saw cases of sexual assault, harassment, theft, fights, revenge violence, domestic violence, murder, violence against children and women. Violence of a criminal nature exceeded 84% of the total violence documented by the Tunisian Social Observatory team.
Hate speech is on the increase in the Tunisian public arena, particularly in interactions on social media. Most of the time, it seems to be motivated by the official rhetoric of authority or its representatives, mainly the President of the Republic and the people’s representatives. In all cases, the issue of migration is the most common trigger for this divisive racist rhetoric. Civil and political movements are always a catalyst for feeding hate speech, distortion and anger in cyberspace, with insults, curses and denigration of any action or opinion that contradicts the opinion of the authority or those who represent it.
