Tunisia needs transitional justice

Tunisian Hoda al-Sharif Tunis - Nébil Zaghdoud Member of Tunisia's Constituent Assembly Hoda al-Sharif has said transitional justice is extremely important for Tunisia.  Interviewed by Arabstoday, Sharif, also a member of the political bureau of the Republican Party, said that the absence of transitional justice was a direct cause for the economic and security crisis witnessed by the country in recent months.
"The Republican Party will promote a draft law for transitional justice to the assembly in the next few days. If such a law was agreed and activated a few months earlier we could have avoided many problems that we are still facing," said Sharif.
 She added: "Our vision of transitional justice is inspired by the relative international laws and charters. This vision is based on four concepts; investigating the truth, accountability through judicial judgments, confession from the criminal against amnesty by the victim after they are rewarded for their sufferings, and finally enacting the required reforms to ensure similar violations will not happen in the future."
 Sharif insisted that those who were involved in any violations against human rights during former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's era should be held accountable, as well as ensuring that Tunisian laws will secure firm protection for the people against human rights violations.
Sharif said that rights violations by the former regime in Tunisia should not be compared to crises in Rwanda, Sierra Leone or South Africa, but at the same time must be acknowledged.
She added that the main guarantee that such abuses would not occur again would be to hold the required reforms in the state's institutions, achieve a high level of good governance, transparency and sovereignty of law, "but this will only take place after transitional justice is activated," Sharif concluded.