Fruitful visit of the Community of Democracies in Tunisia

The week began with a face-to-face meeting of LEND Network participants, in cooperation with Club de Madrid. The meeting, fourth of its kind, brought together Network participants from Tunisia and Moldova, as well as experts, including former Prime Minister of Romania, Mr. Petre Roman, and former President of Albania, Rexhep Meidani.

 The face-to-face meeting focused on consitution building, a topic of high importance and interest in young democracies, and in Tunisia in particular. Three main panels addressed important constitutional issues: Division of power and competencies between the President and the Prime Minister, assurance of universal principles of human rights in the constitution according to international conventions, and conflict-management and consensus building at the time of adoption of the constitution. LEND Network participants had an opportunity to hear from the experts about their experiences on the process of constitution building, and share their own challenges and insights.

During the days following the face-to-face meeting, Secretary General of the Community of Democracies, Ambassador Maria Leissner, continued the visit with a series of meetings with high level representatives from Tunisia. Ambassador Leissner met with the President of the Arab Institute for Human Rights, Mr. Abdelbasset Ben Hassan, the Secretary of State to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Leila Bahria, and the President of the Constituent Assembly, Mr. Mustapha Ben Jaafar. Meetings regarded the current state of the process of democratic consolidation in Tunisia and  the support of the Community to the process, including the continuation of the Democracy Partnership Challenge Task Force for the country.