Abstract
Within a broader project that explores the politics of “dignity” in Tunisia’s post-uprising context, this paper focuses on Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission (TDC)—a human rights mechanism where a locally elected body investigates the human rights violations of the fallen regime and recommends redress for its victims—to analyze the role of monetary reparations in restoring recognition to over 62,000 political victims of the former regime. The Tunisian 2013 transitional justice law recognizes an individual, a political group, or a region as a victim category: a neighborhood, a town, or a city can therefore submit a claim for reparation. I explore the heated public controversy that ensued pitting TDC’s reparations model as a narrow mode of politics that benefits a minority of citizens against the 2011 uprisings’ demand for redistributive justice for all. I analyze this tension between reparative justice and redistributive justice through the case of the “Martyrs and Injured of the Revolution”: the demonstrators who were killed or wounded by police fire during the 2011 uprising. In the context of growing critiques that truth commissions only recommend narrow reforms without addressing the underlying, structural causes of these political violations on the one hand, and debates about the role of reparation as a political demand in realizing social justice, this paper asks: What was the Tunisian TDC’s approach to structural causes of political violations? What is the role of recognition in the ultimate goal of restoring justice to victims of political violence? I conclude with reflections on the relation between recognition, reparation, and redistributive justice in the context of Tunisia’s transitional justice process.
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