When science and logic are used to debunk misconceptions, stereotypes, and to promote tolerance and open-mindedness, you might end up changing someone’s perceptions. This was the goal of Baha Lajmi and Fahd Baaziz, two 16-year-old Tunisian high school students from Soussa, when they started a YouTube channel, Draw My...
As Donald Trump declared that transgender individuals would no longer be allowed to serve in the US military last week, in Rojava, Syria, the creation of a new and rather revolutionary military unit in the fight against Daesh (ISIS) was announced. This military unit, The Queer Insurrection and Liberation...
In Berlin, the opening of a new and most unusual mosque, the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque, has incited both support and outrage. What makes this mosque special is that both men and women pray together. This mixed mosque was founded and is led by the female imam and self-proclaimed Muslim...
Tunisia is, after Jordan, the second country in the Mediterranean area to be most affected by drought and dryness. Not only is it the smallest country in the Maghreb, it is also the one with the least reliable water resources. Aware of this problem and with the intention of...
Asma Othmani, a Tunisian singer, took an old traditional Tunisian song of the Mizwad genre called “Yama Lasmar Douni” (“Oh brown is bad”) and made a new interpretation of it adding a piece of spoken word called “Tounes Alwen” (“Tunis of Colors”) written by Jihed Cherni,...
Today is International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, celebrated all over the world. In Tunis, Tunisia, there are two big events taking place that protest the existence of the article 230 of the Tunisian penal code, which criminalizes the LGBT+ community, as well as the all too common aggressions...
I met Sana Jlassi and Chouaib Brik, the masterminds behind Art Solution, the pioneering Tunisian association for urban culture and art founded in 2011, in the creative base of the association in Tunis. This space for creative expression and innovation, the Tag Store, made for a great setting for...
When I met Maria Hadjipavlou – a pioneering activist and well-known expert on conflict resolution and gender issues – one Wednesday around the end of February, we met in the buffer zone and the negotiations between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots just had been stalled – again. I had...
Last December, at the end of this eventful year, a new wave of protest filled the streets of Tunis following a court decision made on the 13th of December in Kef, a city situated in the North-East of Tunisia. The judge used the article 227bis of the Tunisian penal...
Aatik is a project which was co-founded in Tunisia by Canadian Emma Djilali and her colleague Sophie Bergman from Germany in fall 2015. The project works with a group of female weavers in the region of Siliana in North-west Tunisia. The goal is to help these women to build up...
