The Transitional Justice Barometer, Tunisia: A policy brief

The Transitional Justice Barometer was a two year research project, a collaboration between the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, Impunity Watch and the Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center (KADEM). It sought to do empirical research that could both impact positively on Tunisia’s transitional justice process (TJ) and inform the global TJ practice through academics publications. It built capacity in creating and training a research unit within KADEM, and supported victim communities to both contribute to knowledge production around the transition and support the participation of their communities in the process.

Research conducted by the Barometer aimed to be credible, relevant and actionable, offering high quality input that was usable by all stakeholders engaged by the TJ process. The project conducted four studies that have been published over the two years up to November 2016:

• Victim Participation in Tunisia's Transitional Justice process
• The "victim zone" and collective reparations in Tunisia: Ain Draham and Sidi Makhlouf: "So rich and yet so poor" 
• Contrasting notions of history and collective memory in Tunisia: The teaching of recent history and the figure of Bourguiba today
• Research and transitional justice in Tunisia

This briefing summarises the recommendations of the studies to offer a compact guide to stakeholders seeking to apply the lessons of the research. Whilst a few of the original recommendations have been overtaken by events, most are as relevant as ever.