For more than a decade, Tunisia has been living under what was meant to be a temporary measure.
In early 2026, Tunisian President Kais Saied extended the country's long-running state of emergency by 11 months, until 31 December, according to the official gazette published on 31 January. The extension follows the latest in a series of periodic renewals, the most recent of which covered just one month in January.
Under the emergency framework, the Interior Ministry holds broad powers to ban public gatherings, impose curfews, conduct searches of shops and homes, and monitor the press, radio broadcasts, cinema and theatre productions, all without prior judicial authorisation.
The measures were first introduced after a suicide bombing on 24 November 2015 that targeted a bus carrying members of the presidential guard through central Tunis. 12 security officers and the attacker were killed, and 16 others, both security personnel and civilians, were wounded in the attack, which the Islamic State group later claimed.
More than 10 years later, the emergency remains in force, and its repeated renewals have transformed it from a temporary measure into a permanent feature of governance.
Tunisia's state of emergency is not a legal formality. The decree governing it dates back to 26 January 1978, and allows the president to declare emergency rule for renewable periods of up to 30 days.
Rights organisations, both domestic and international, have warned for years that the framework falls short of safeguards required under international human rights law, particularly given its indefinite extension.
The UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly raised concerns that Tunisia's state of emergency risks exceeding the standards that permit such measures in exceptional crises. And since Saied's consolidation of power beginning in July 2021, opposition forces fear the emergency is being used against those who reject his rule.
A decade of the emergency state
The 2015 bombing was one of the most severe security incidents Tunisia experienced after its 2011 revolution, and emergency rule was introduced in direct response. But even during the democratic transition following the revolution, the state of emergency never ended.
Political analyst Mahdi Elleuch described it as one of the most telling contradictions of Tunisia's post-revolution trajectory.
"It was constantly justified by security concerns, first through the fight against terrorism and, later, sometimes through anti-corruption campaigns," he told The New Arab.
Emna Ben Khelifa, Research and Documentation Officer at the Intersection Association for Rights and Freedoms, noted that the democratic period also exposed a deeper structural problem.
Tunisia, she said, never fully dismantled the security logic inherited from authoritarian rule. The emergency system allowed security institutions to operate with extended discretion, but during the democratic years, courts, civil society, and political debate still limited how far those powers could go.
The emergency framework also reshapes the relationship between security institutions and the rule of law.
"State of emergency procedures grant security forces special prerogatives that allow them to act outside ordinary judicial control," she said. "Measures such as house searches or movement restrictions can be carried out without the usual requirement of a judicial warrant."
International human rights law permits states to adopt emergency measures during exceptional crises. However, such measures must remain strictly time-limited, proportionate to the threat, and subject to independent oversight.
The reform that never came
During Tunisia's democratic decade, emergency measures did not go uncontested. Civil society groups openly challenged their use, and individuals subjected to administrative restrictions, including house arrests and travel bans, took their cases to administrative courts.
Several judicial rulings overturned emergency measures, and judges questioned the constitutional validity of the 1978 decree itself, according to Elleuch.
That legal and political pressure eventually led to attempts at reform. A draft emergency law introduced in 2018 sought to replace the decree with modern legislation that would define strict limits on executive power and introduce parliamentary oversight. The bill was reviewed and amended by the parliamentary Committee on Rights and Freedoms. Critics argued the revised version still fell short of guaranteeing effective protection of rights and freedoms. The legislation was never adopted.
Elleuch said the emergency existed during the democratic period, but it was confronted by democratic pressure. There were still institutional and social spaces where citizens could challenge those powers, he said.
That balance shifted after Saied's actions beginning in July 2021. Parliament and the Supreme Judicial Council were dissolved. Saied issued legislation by presidential decree, pushed through a new constitution via referendum, and held early legislative elections. He began a second five-year presidential term in October 2024.
Saied has described his actions as necessary and legal steps to save the state from total collapse. His supporters view the measures as a correction to the path of the 2011 revolution, which toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after more than two decades in power. Opposition forces consider the measures a consolidation of absolute one-person rule.
Within this changed political landscape, analysts say emergency powers now operate with far fewer constraints. Elleuch argued the shift is not only institutional but also conceptual.
"Today, the danger is not simply that emergency powers are used to restrict political activity, including preventing opposition groups from organising or closing their offices," he said. "The deeper problem is that the capacity to resist these measures has largely disappeared."
Ben Khelifa described the current situation as "a legal grey zone."
When authorities invoke emergency powers, procedural guarantees that would normally protect individuals can effectively vanish, she said. The system allows security decisions to bypass normal judicial review.
She added that emergency laws are designed to address exceptional threats, not to regulate everyday political life. When emergency measures become routine governance tools, she warned, they create a permanent imbalance between security authority and civil liberties.
Shrinking spaces
Concerns over the prolonged use of emergency powers have also extended to their broader impact on media freedom. In the 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Tunisia ranked 129th globally, down from 118th in 2024 and 121st in 2023, after leading the Arab region in 2021.
Ziad Dabbar, head of the Tunisian Journalists' Syndicate, warned that the persistence of emergency governance risks entrenching a restrictive legal environment for journalists, particularly amid Tunisia's post-2021 political transformation.
"Since the adoption of the new constitution and the restructuring of political institutions, there is a real fear that Tunisia could move towards scenarios seen elsewhere in the region," Dabbar said, referring to Egypt's prolonged state of emergency, which remained in force for more than two decades and was used to restrict journalistic work, including freedom of movement and access to information.
Dabbar stressed, however, that emergency legislation is not always the primary legal instrument used against journalists in practice. Instead, he said, authorities increasingly rely on a combination of overlapping laws.
"The current authorities apply Decree-Law 54, the Telecommunications Code dating back to the Ben Ali era, anti-terrorism legislation, and provisions of the penal code against journalists, rather than the press law established under Decree 115," he said.
He added that the continued reliance on older legal frameworks reflects a broader pattern of legal continuity, warning that emergency powers, even when not directly invoked, remain available as a theoretical tool to restrict journalistic activity.
"Emergency laws are supposed to respond to extraordinary threats," Dabbar said. "When they remain in force for years, there is always a risk that what was designed as exceptional becomes the rule rather than the exception."
Elleuch framed Tunisia's current trajectory as a shift from what he called an "incomplete democracy", where authoritarian legacies persisted but could still be contested, to a political system where avenues for dissent have narrowed considerably.
"Tunisia's democratic period still carried the legacy of the police state," he said. "But there were real margins for protest, expression, and institutional influence. Today, many of those margins have been dismantled."
This article is produced in collaboration with Egab.