Tunisian Social Observatory  

February 2025  

The pace of protests remains high, unresolved professional problems, deterioration of public services and decline in rights and freedoms  

The Tunisian Social Observatory, an organ of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, recorded 427 protest movements during February 2025.  This represents an increase of 138.5% compared with the same period in 2024, when 179 protest actions were observed during the month.  

During the second month of the year, social actors continued to mobilize, rejecting the current situation and seeking solutions to change their precarious socio-economic situation. Unemployed graduates returned to the squares in force, demonstrating to demand jobs, recruitment and a decree allowing them to join the civil service. Some social movements, who were not expected to return to the streets once they had secured their demands and officially begun the process of regularizing their professional situation, resumed their protests, with teachers and substitute schoolteachers who found themselves outside the integration lists mobilizing, as well as construction site workers who have not yet obtained decrees regularizing their situation. Non-contractual supervisors and advisors, staff and employees of the International Centre for the Advancement of People with Disabilities and associations working with disabled people were reminded of their precarious and inhumane situation and their years of waiting for a real assignment.  

During the same month, the country witnessed a series of sectoral general strikes and vigils in front of the presidential palace, on the Place de la Kasbah, in front of and inside workplaces, notably for employees of the National Post Office, supervisors, contract counsellors, children’s educators, employees of the Ministry of the Family, Women, Children and the Elderly, adult education teachers, employees of the General University of Information Technology, redundant employees of the Ministry of Culture and employees of the National Institute of Statistics. Teachers mobilized for the enactment of a law criminalizing attacks on the educational family, the implementation of ongoing agreements and improved subsidies, while justice officials mobilized for the cancellation of all sanctions and the holding of a dialogue table with their union representation.   

In February 2025, the families of people who disappeared during irregular migration operations demonstrated and demanded the formation of a committee to reveal the fate of their sons, while people living on the outskirts of the Chaambi mountain asked for alternative sources of income to protect them from the danger of mines. Inhabitants also demanded a supply of drinking water, an end to cut-offs, improved road infrastructure and public facilities, the supply of consumer products, particularly subsidized ones such as vegetable oil, the right to health, transport, good administrative services, a healthy environment, a clean living environment, and an end to marine pollution, which is causing desertification and the destruction of the sea’s wealth and fisheries.   

A traffic accident on the road between Moulares and the town of Gafsa claimed six lives and was the catalyst for a series of actions at governorate level, starting with a regional strike and demonstrations by the population in Redayef and Moulares, culminating in a regional day of anger attended by numerous representatives of civil society and citizens.  

The death of a student in the Ragada dormitory in Kairouan provoked a state of tension and anger among students and was the subject of regional movements denouncing poor health services and accommodation in university halls of residence. The suicide of a young man in the governorate of Sousse in front of a police station aroused anger in the region. 

February 2025 saw movements in the form of symbolic funerals for Hassan Nasrallah and others denouncing US President Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding the Palestinian territories and his intentions to displace the Palestinian people.  

During the second month of the year, human rights movements also continued, denouncing the rollback of gains in freedoms and rights, and demanding the release of those arrested in so-called conspiracy cases and the release of journalists Mourad Zghidi, Borhen Bessaies, Chadha Belhaj Mbarek, and media figure Sonia Dahmani. The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) also denounced this regression and condemned the investigation process targeting journalist Zied Elhani.  

Meanwhile, members of the Parti Destourien Libre continued their hunger strike at party headquarters until lifted by the party president, in protest against the ill-treatment suffered by Abir Moussi during her transfer from Manouba to Belli prison.  

Unlike last year, the social actor has chosen to return to the public space as the main and official framework for protest, and 93% of the protests observed in February 2025 took place on the ground, while 7% of movements took place in the digital space.   

Demands linked to the settlement of professional status, the right to employment, the implementation of current agreements and the improvement of working conditions remain at the top of the list in terms of protest motives for social actors, accounting for around 50% of movements recorded during the month of February, followed by movements linked to the deterioration of public services such as connection to the drinking water network and electricity, improvement of road infrastructure, breaking the isolation, student transport, renovation of educational establishments, connection to the metro network, price controls, provision of basic equipment, insurance, protection and a healthy environment. In third place are rights-based movements, which are mainly linked to court rulings, citizens’ rights and the denunciation of a situation or decision, and account for around 20% of the total number of movements.  

During the month of February, Tunis remained at the top of the list of regions with protests and demands, recording 138 movements, representing almost a third, followed by Tataouine with 40 movements, Manouba and Kairouan with 25 movements each, and Sidi Bouzid in fifth place with 24 movements, Gafsa with 19 movements, Kasserine with 17 movements, and Kebili and Zaghouan came last with 5 movements each, knowing that the Republic’s various governorates without exception recorded movements and protests during the month of February.  

48.14% of social movements in February were directed at the presidency of the government, the Ministry of Education came second with 13.49% of movements, followed by regional authorities with over 9%, then the central authorities of ministries, departments and offices, and 6.98% of movements were directed at the judicial authorities. Movements also targeted the Tunisian electricity and gas company, the presidency of the republic, the national water distribution and exploitation company, the transport company, the people’s assembly and educational establishments.  

Social actors included activists, rights defenders, journalists, workers, employees, agents, administrators, professors, teachers, construction workers, students, families of missing persons, parents, farmers, traders, health professionals, fishermen, drivers and residents. 

In 162 actions, social actors used strikes as a form of protest, followed by vigils and peaceful marches in 78 actions. Demonstrators chose the hunger strike in 61 actions, reflecting impatience and the breakdown of the negotiation process, as this is an advanced form of protest in the hierarchy of social movements in general. 

Calls for help numbered 56, business interruptions 32, sit-ins 25, with the remainder of actions divided between roadblocks, stone-throwing, work site closures, technical protests and the prevention of enrolment in educational establishments.  

As in previous months, the majority of actions brought together women and men and took place mainly during the day, with 4 organized overnight. 40 actions were organized by men only, 17 by women only, and the remaining 373 were mixed.  

Based on the Social Observatory’s monitoring sample, February saw 10 cases of suicide and attempted suicide, 5 of which took the form of protests, with police stations and prisons recording 2 of the suicides observed. Five of the suicides took place in and around the place of residence.  

Although it is difficult to determine the motives that lead young people to self-harm and choose suicide as a life option, economic conditions, mistreatment in detention centers, dropping out of school, bullying and family conflicts are among the reasons behind the suicidal incidents recorded, according to data collected during the follow-up.  

The governorate of Sfax recorded 2 suicides during February 2025, while the governorates of Ariana, Kasserine, Kairouan, Tunis, Zaghouan, Sousse, Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa each experienced one suicide.  

Violent incidents observed during February 2025 took the form of essentially relational crime, with violent assaults accounting for 33.33% of cases observed, murders 28.57% and attempted murders 9.52%. Robberies accounted for 14.29%, violence against children for 4.76%, and the same number of cases involved theft.  

As in the previous month, violent incidents during February 2025 are generally oriented towards aggression itself, revenge, revenge, honor, minimization and devaluation of the other’s value. None of the regions is exempt from showing a high level of prevalence. Violence is the main objective for 66.67% of them, while in 23.81% the objective is theft, and the rest of the violence is divided between harassment, sexual assault and revenge.  

In Kasserine, a woman was murdered by her daughter following an argument between them. In Kairouan, a young man died after being stabbed by his friend, and a student was wounded in the thigh at a high school in Kasserine by his colleague.  A young man killed his mother in Kasr Hlal in the Monastir governorate after she refused to give him a sum of money, and a young man killed his brother with a knife in the Sbikha delegation in Kairouan, and a child was molested in a kindergarten in Siliana, and in the Kesra delegation, a security guard was arrested after threatening his wife with death, and a number of the Republic’s governorates, such as Kasserine, Tunis and Manouba, recorded robbery incidents.  

The locations of the violent incidents observed were divided between the street, the home and educational establishments, and the aggressors in 80.95% of violent incidents were men, compared with 38.1% of victims in violent incidents recorded during the month of February. Women accounted for 52.38% of victims, while they represented 19.05% of perpetrators.  

In 95.24% of violent incidents documented by the Tunisian Social Observatory team, the violence took a criminal form, while in 4.76% it was institutional.