Please join us for a special event on Tunisia’s post-July 25 political landscape and possible trajectories. The first part of the event will examine President Kaïs Saïed’s governance since his power grab, the threats to Tunisia’s democracy, and the pushback against a return to autocracy. The second part will look at what role international actors, including the United States, may be able to play in shoring up democracy in Tunisia.
Panel 1: Views from Tunisia and the Region
10 am – 11 am ET | 4 pm – 5 pm GMT +1
Panelists:
- Amine Ghali
Program Director, Al-Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center (KADEM), Tunis - Amna Guellali
Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Amnesty International, Tunis - Monica Marks
Professor of Middle East Politics, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), Abu Dhabi
Moderator:
- Amy Hawthorne
Deputy Director for Research, POMED, Washington, D.C.
Panel 2: A View from the U.S. Congress
11 am – 11:15 am ET | 5:00 pm – 5:15 pm GMT +1
A conversation with:
- Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)
U.S. Senator from Connecticut; Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism - Stephen McInerney
Executive Director, POMED
Speaker Bios
Amine Ghali is the Program Director at Al-Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center (KADEM) in Tunis. Currently he focuses on political reform, elections, and transitional justice issues. Following the Tunisian revolution, he was appointed as a member of the National Commission to Investigate Corruption, and then as a member of the National Commission on the Transitional Justice Debate.
Amna Guellali is currently Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. Previously, Dr. Guellali was the director of the Tunis office of Human Rights Watch, where she was responsible for research on Tunisia and Algeria in the organization’s Middle East and North Africa division, and an analyst at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Monica Marks is a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and a scholar of Islamist movements, gender, and politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Her research focuses on broad topics across the region and beyond, but especially in regard to the tensions between pluralism and state power in the two countries where she’s lived longest: Tunisia and Turkey.
Amy Hawthorne (moderator) is the Deputy Director for Research at POMED. She is also the chair of the Working Group on Egypt. Prior to her work at POMED, Amy served as Resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council and as an appointee at the State Department, where she worked on U.S. policy toward Egypt and Tunisia following the 2011 uprisings.
Senator Chris Murphy has been the junior U.S. Senator for Connecticut since taking office in 2013. As the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, he is an outspoken proponent of democracy, human rights, and foreign policy issues in the Middle East. In 2016, Sen. Murphy received POMED’s Leaders for Democracy award.
Stephen McInerney is currently the Executive Director at POMED. Prior to joining POMED, he spent six years living, working, and studying in the Middle East and North Africa—two years each in Egypt, Lebanon, and Qatar.