La Coalition nationale tunisienne contre la peine de mort (Tunisian National Coalition Against the Death Penalty) was founded in Tunis on 14 June 2007 by seven human rights NGOs and public figures from the arts and literature.
The creation of the Tunisian Coalition answered the appeal launched by the World Coalition at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty held in Paris in February 2007. Its participants had been encouraged to form national and regional coalitions so as to encourage networking between sometimes isolated organisations fighting against capital punishment.
The Tunisian Coalition has based its operational charter on that of the World Coalition, giving itself the aim of “obtaining abolition of the death penalty in [its] country and taking a leading role by coordinating action to promote a large-scale civil movement supporting abolition and by taking action with the authorities for [its] country to rejoin the group of abolitionist States”.
No executions have been carried out in Tunisia since 1994 but the country nonetheless preserves the death penalty in its penal legislation and there are many sentenced prisoners awaiting possible execution. The Coalition has therefore fixed as objectives the implementation of a moratorium and improvement in the living conditions of these prisoners, with a view to definitive abolition.