Mohsen Marzouk ( ar, محسن مرزوق; born July 1965) is a
Tunisian politician. He holds a degree in
political sociology and
International Relations from the
International Studies Association in Tunis.
Early life
Mohsen Marzouk was born in July 1965 and raised in a poor working-class neighborhood in the city of
Sfax. 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 spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
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'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
EL, El or el may refer to:
Religion
* El (deity), a Semitic word for "God"
People
* EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer
* El DeBarge, music artist
* El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...
.
Career
From 1989 on, he worked as a coordinator for the newly founded
Arab Institute for Human Rights
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, No ...
.
Since 2008 he has been secretary-general of the non-governmental
Arab Democracy Foundation and member of the
.
Marzouk is one of the founders of
Nidaa Tounes and was member of the party's Executive Committee.
As
Beji Caid Essebsi
Beji Caid Essebsi (or es-Sebsi; ar, الباجي قائد السبسي, translit=Muhammad al-Bājī Qā’id as-Sibsī, ; 29 November 1926 – 25 July 2019) was a Tunisian politician who served as the 6th president of Tunisia from 31 December 20 ...
'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