Interviews with Abdel Basset Ben Hassen

Our work with human rights was not easy at all. We went through many, many challenges and many difficulties. You know, the two last decades were challenges because the political will of the oppressive regimes was against human rights in general. And it was challenging really to work in very hostile environment. And for me and for my friends from the Arab human rights movement, we´ve faced many, many problems dealing with the security institutions, dealing with the political ruling parties. It was this was kind of a challenge for us.

Second big challenge: about the country, our culture. And it was not easy to introduce human rights concepts– the universality of human rights concepts in our region. And the resistance was not only the resistance of ordinary people. It was also the resistance of some representatives of the elites in the Arab countries. And I think that it was very difficult to convince some representatives of political parties, of even some writers, to convince them of the universality of human rights. Because of the legacy of the political discourse. Discourse based neither on the nationalism and also on the closed discourses, political discourses.

These kinds of challenges we faced. And also we´ve been under attack, under attack for our relations with the international networks, the human rights worldwide networks. Under attacks for our work to develop networks between human rights activists from the Arab countries and African countries. But in spite of all this, of all these problems, I think that the Arab human rights movement succeeded to have some achievements, to achieve some important successes.

First, to introduce the human rights culture in the Arab countries. And to challenge the political, social, and cultural discourses, based mainly on authoritarian concepts and authoritarian practices. And I think that we succeeded, for example, to challenge all these discourses by introducing women´s rights, by developing work about minorities, about the personal rights.

This was a real challenge for us. But I think we achieved a kind of education activities. The second, I think, big achievement was to challenge the– to analyze the mechanisms of authoritarian regimes. And to demonstrate that these regimes are not are not so solid. And that we can challenge them. We can challenge them through developing civil society organizations, through developing the political culture within the trade unions, with political parties.

This also was part of what we achieved. I think the third thing also was to resist. This was one of the main achievements, to resist, to survive. And I think that we spent a lot of time developing strategies, tactics on how to survive. On how to protect our organizations. How to develop some relationships with normal people and make people protect our work, believe in our work, and protect our work.

I think that this kind of achievement– of course, we´ve been always faced by a kind of discourse, trying to tell people that we are just a group of people working on foreign ideas and strange idea for our societies, but the revolutions in the Arab countries and what all these kind of waves of change, I think, that demonstrate that the human rights– our work was not strange to our to societies. And that we demonstrated that the human rights culture, the human rights concepts, the democratic concepts are not strange to our societies.

Abdel Basset Ben Hassen is a Tunisian freedom advocate who has dedicated much of his adult life to the promotion of human rights in the Arab world. His interest in the field was sparked during his university days while participating in student political movements that focused on promoting democracy and human rights.

After graduation, Ben Hassen joined the Arab Institute for Human Rights (AIHR) where he worked to train thousands of freedom activists across the region on developing strategies for promoting their causes. Later, he joined the Ford Foundation in Egypt and worked directly with farmers, fisherman, and laborers in depressed areas to encourage greater human rights discourse and educate the poor on their basic rights. These efforts proved challenging as authoritarian leaders in the Middle East and Africa posed numerous roadblocks to the work of civil society in promoting human rights and political initiatives. As a result, many were afraid to work for or cooperate with such organizations.

Today, Ben Hassen is the President of AIHR and serves as a prominent voice in the international community for promoting human rights in the Arab world. Ben Hassen is also the chair of the Tunisian National Committee for the Support to Refugees and served as a member of Tunisia’s High Committee for the Realization of the Objectives of the Revolution, Political Reform and Democratic Transition.

In addition to his advocacy work, Ben Hassen is a poet whose books have been translated into French, Italian, and German.