Tunisian authorities are being urged to immediately drop charges against six staff members of the French NGO France Terre d’Asile, who are facing a criminal trial for their humanitarian work with refugees and migrants. Three of the staff, including Sherifa Riahi and Mohamed Joo, have been held in arbitrary pretrial detention for over 19 months, alongside local municipality employees who collaborated with them. Amnesty International highlights that these prosecutions criminalize legitimate humanitarian work and undermine civil society.
The trial involves 23 individuals, including NGO staff and former local officials, accused of facilitating irregular entry, exit, or stay of foreigners. Terre d’Asile Tunisie operated legally and transparently under Tunisian law, and its work directly supported refugees and migrants in line with international obligations. Prosecuting them violates the right to freedom of association and the protections guaranteed to human rights defenders under international law. Humanitarian support, regardless of migrants’ legal status, is explicitly protected by international conventions and must not be conflated with human smuggling.
This trial is part of a broader crackdown on civil society in Tunisia, particularly targeting organizations working on migration and refugee protection. Recent convictions of Tunisian Council for Refugees staff, arbitrary arrests, asset freezes, and restrictions on over 15 organizations have severely limited the capacity of NGOs to operate. Authorities have also blocked UNHCR’s refugee status determination activities since June 2024, removing a critical avenue for asylum seekers.
The crackdown has had severe consequences for refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, including unaccompanied children, who now face reduced access to essential services such as emergency shelter, healthcare, child protection, gender-based violence assistance, and legal aid. Amnesty International and other human rights groups stress that these actions constitute a deliberate strategy to dismantle Tunisia’s civic space, placing vulnerable populations at heightened risk of abuse and rights violations.
