At the heart of the dispute is the persistent inertia of the Ministry of Justice regarding trade union demands and repeated warnings about the deteriorating working conditions in Tunisian courts. A national press conference is also planned to inform the public of the situation in the country’s courthouses. Dean Boubaker Belthabet is signing the official statements on behalf of the council.

A precise strike schedule, a lasting anger

The decisions made on May 13, 2026, are not improvised. They are part of a gradual, carefully planned escalation by the National Bar Council, following what the profession describes as a deafening dialogue with the Ministry of Justice.

The action plan has two components. First, a series of mandatory regional strikes, spread over several weeks according to a precise geographical schedule:

Tuesday, May 19, 2026: Courts in Tunis, Nabeul, and Zaghouan are targeted, with a rally at the Tunis court of first instance.

Thursday, May 21, 2026: The bar associations of Bizerte, Béja, Jendouba, Le Kef, and Siliana will strike, with a rally at the Bizerte court of first instance.

Monday, May 25, 2026: Lawyers from Sfax, Gafsa, Tozeur, and Sidi Bouzid join the movement, gathering at the Sfax 1 court of first instance.

Monday, June 1, 2026: Médenine, Gabès, Kébili, and Tataouine follow, with a rally at the Médenine court of first instance.

Monday, June 8, 2026: The bar associations of Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia, Kairouan, and Kasserine close ranks around the Sousse court of first instance.

Second, a mandatory general national strike is scheduled for Thursday, June 18, 2026, with a central rally at the Tunis court of justice — the most symbolically charged date of the entire action program.

Starting May 18, all lawyers, without exception, are called upon to wear the red armband during their hearings in all courts of the Republic. This gesture — visible, sober, indisputable — is a form of silent protest intended for magistrates, litigants, and the public. The Tunis regional branch, under the signature of its president, Soufiane Ben El Haj Mohamed, released an official statement on May 14, 2026, to coordinate the practical details of the May 19 strike in the capital’s courts.

Specific demands, absent responses

To understand why the profession has reached this point, one must return to the roots of the conflict. The Bar Council recalls having repeatedly and officially requested a dialogue with the Ministry of Justice on a set of structural demands, spanning several fronts.

The first concerns the judicial infrastructure itself. The Bar Association denounces the advanced deterioration of court buildings: insufficient courtrooms, outdated equipment, and working conditions that no longer allow for a public justice service to be provided in dignified conditions. These situations directly affect the quality of procedures and, ultimately, the rights of litigants.

The second front concerns the institutional functioning of the judicial system. The Council points to the persistent deadlock in establishing the Supreme Judicial Council — a constitutional body whose absence affects the governance of the judiciary — as well as the use of what the profession describes as arbitrary circulars to organize the transfers of magistrates, without prior consultation or compensation for those affected.

The third issue concerns the social protection of lawyers themselves. Documented dysfunctions of the National Retirement and Social Welfare Fund for lawyers are a major concern for the entire profession, especially for generations approaching retirement.

Faced with these demands, the Ministry of Justice has reportedly not formulated any substantial response since the extraordinary general assembly of May 1, 2026 — a meeting described by the Bar Council as having brought together hundreds of lawyers from across the country, in a display of professional solidarity rare in its scale.

Historical reminder: a profession that has always resisted

The activism of the Tunisian Bar Association is not new. It is part of a long and well-documented tradition dating back to the first decades of the independent state.

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, under President Habib Bourguiba, Tunisian lawyers constituted one of the few professional bodies capable of organized resistance against the authoritarian excesses of the Destour regime. The National Bar Association, founded in 1956 following independence, quickly established itself as a counter-power space, protected by the nature of the legal profession and the formal independence guarantees attached to the practice of law.

In the 1980s, as Tunisia experienced a severe economic crisis and social tensions rose, lawyers played an active role in defending prosecuted trade unionists and political opponents, helping to maintain a minimal space for legal protection in a judicial system under pressure.

Under Ben Ali, the profession had an ambivalent relationship with the regime. Officially controlled, it nevertheless sheltered dissident voices, defended human rights activists, and produced figures who found themselves at the forefront of the post-2011 transition — including Chawki Tabib, a former bar president and former head of the National Anti-Corruption Authority, recently imprisoned in circumstances his supporters describe as politically motivated.

After the 2011 revolution, the Bar Association experienced an unprecedented period of ferment. Lawyers actively participated in drafting the founding texts of the new Republic, sat on national dialogue bodies, and contributed to the legislative framework of the democratic transition. The Bar also played a mediating role during the political crises of 2013, alongside the other components of the National Dialogue Quartet, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.

Since 2021, the profession finds itself in a new position: no longer a partner in a transition, but a sentinel watching for institutional regression with growing concern. The imprisonment of Chawki Tabib, the pressure on magistrates, the deterioration of working conditions in the courts — all signals the Bar interprets as an attack on the very foundations of the rule of law.

A tipping point ahead

The action program adopted on May 13 runs until June 18, 2026. Until then, every hearing in every court in the country will be marked by the lawyers’ red armband of protest. If the regional strikes do not produce a response from the ministry, the national strike on June 18 promises to be a breaking point.

The Bar Council has warned it will not stop there: the determination to “pursue all forms of struggle” is written in black and white in the statement signed by Dean Belthabet. What the government chooses to do — or not do — in the coming weeks will say much about the real state of dialogue between the executive branch and intermediary bodies in Tunisia.

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