Mohsen Marzouk (; born July 1965) is a

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

n politician. He holds a degree in

political sociology Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how ...

and

International Relations International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

from the

International Studies Association The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of International relations, international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Con ...

in Tunis.

Early life

Mohsen Marzouk was born in July 1965 and raised in a poor working-class neighborhood in the city of

Sfax Sfax ( ; , ) is a major port city in Tunisia, located southeast of Tunis. The city, founded in AD849 on the ruins of Taparura, is the capital of the Sfax Governorate (about 955,421 inhabitants in 2014), and a Mediterranean port. Sfax has a ...

. At fourteen, he was expelled from school for his oppositional political activities. He managed to re-enter and finish high school in Sfax. At the University of Tunis, Marzouk was a leading student activist. In 1987, while still enrolled, he was arrested by Tunisia's secret police. He was interrogated and tortured for many days before being sent to a

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see British and American spelling differences, spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are unfree labour, forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have ...

in the southern desert. When he was allowed to return, Marzouk remained politically active. He worked towards reinstating the General Union of Tunisian Students (UGET) which after

Ben Ali Ben Ali may refer to: People * Ben Ali (businessman) (1927–2009), founder of the restaurant Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington, DC, USA * Habib Ben Ali (1941–1996), Tunisian criminal * Ibrahim Ben Ali (1756–1800), soldier and physician who was ...

's rise to power became deeply divided over its further political course. Marzouk was appointed to the UGET's executive bureau while at the same time, he was conspiratively active for the outlawed leftist movement El Amal Ettounsi.

Career

From 1989 on, he worked as a coordinator for the newly founded Arab Institute for Human Rights. Since 2008 he has been secretary-general of the non-governmental Arab Democracy Foundation and member of the

International Steering Committee of the Community of Democracies Council for a Community of Democracies is a Washington, D.C.–based NGO which was established in order to promote global interest in and support for the Community of Democracies The Community of Democracies (C.O.D), established in 2000, is an ...

. Marzouk is one of the founders of

Nidaa Tounes Nidaa Tounes ( ', ; usually translated as "Call of Tunisia", "Call for Tunisia", or "Tunisia's Call") is a big tent secularist political party in Tunisia. After being founded in 2012, the party won a plurality of seats in the October 2014 p ...

and was member of the party's Executive Committee. As

Beji Caid Essebsi Beji Caid Essebsi (or es-Sebsi; , ; 29 November 1926 – 25 July 2019) was a Tunisian politician who served as the fourth president of Tunisia from 31 December 2014 until his death on 25 July 2019. Previously, he served as minister of foreign af ...

's campaign manager in the 2014 presidential election he announced Essebsi's victory in the runoff vote on 21 December, stating that Tunisians were now turning the page of the transitional phase and that Tunisia was now a stable democracy. Marzouk’s faction within Nidaa Tounes supported a more assertive, secularist government. Marzouk left the party in early January 2016 and later became part of Machrouu Tounes.

Publications and working papers

* Marzouk, M. (1997): ''The Associative Phenomenon in the Arab World: engine of democratisation or witness to the crisis?'' in: David Hulme and Michael Edwards (ed.): "NGOs, States and Donors. Too close for comfort?" New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Republished: London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, . * Marzouk, M. (2003): ''Social Movements in Tunisia: Searching for the Absent''. Arab Research Center, 2003. * Marzouk, M. (2005): ''Social Movements in Tunisia and the Democratization Process''. Santiago: Community of Democracies, 2005.
archived

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marzouk, Mohsen 1965 births Living people Tunisian activists Nidaa Tounes politicians Members of the International Steering Committee of the Community of Democracies People from Sfax People named in the Pandora Papers Candidates for President of Tunisia