Welcome to the website of the Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 18 organisations that belong to the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) network.

The TMG campaigns to raise awareness of free expression violations in Tunisia and to support independent journalists, writers, and civil society activists in their struggle to end censorship in the country.

The campaign began at the IFEX General Meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan in June 2004, when 31 members of IFEX signed an open letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressing serious concerns about the decision to host the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.

These concerns were reinforced by experiences at the Tunis Summit Preparatory Committee meeting held later that month in Hammamet, Tunisia, when Tunisian government officials and Tunisian government-sponsored "NGOs" sought to suppress any discussion of human rights in Tunisia.

As a result, a number of IFEX members involved in the WSIS process took the decision to establish the TMG to observe and report on freedom of expression in Tunisia in the run-up to, and in the period following, the Tunis Summit of the WSIS in November 2005.

Since then, TMG members have continued to carry out missions and issue reports and joint actions. (See relevant sections on this site for updates.)

The members of the TMG are:

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo): www.hrinfo.net
Article 19: www.article19.org
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression: www.cjfe.org
Cartoonists Rights Network International: www.cartoonistrights.com
Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights: www.eohr.org
Index on Censorship: www.indexonline.org
International Federation of Journalists: www.ifj.org
International Federation of Library Association and Institutions: www.ifla.org/faife
International PEN - Writers in Prison Committee: www.internationalpen.org.uk
International Press Institute: www.freemedia.at
International Publishers' Association: www.ipa-uie.org
Journaliste en Danger: www.jed-afrique.org
Maharat Foundation: www.maharatfoundation.org
Media Institute of Southern Africa: www.misa.org
Norwegian PEN: www.norskpen.no
World Association of Newspapers: www.wan-press.org
World Press Freedom Committee: www.wpfc.org
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters: www.amarc.org

To contact the TMG, send an e-mail to mena@ifex.org