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2022 Anne Klein Women's Award to Yosra Frawes, lawyer and women’s rights activist from Tunis, Tunisia
The 2022 Anne Klein Women’s Prize goes to Yosra Frawes, a Tunisian feminist and international women’s rights activist, lawyer, and feminist poet. Yosra Frawes is originally from the town of Jedeida in the Medjerda Valley near Tunis and now lives in the country’s capital. She chose to study law in order to become a lawyer for the poor, as well as for vulnerable and abused women.
“Full gender equality, practiced in everyday life, is not a desirable option, but a goal that every society must strive for,” says Yosra Frawes.
Jury’s Rationale
Yosra Frawes grew up under Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule; she experienced firsthand the repressive and patriarchal structures of Tunisian politics and society and joined Tunisia’s progressive feminist movements at an early age. Long before the Arab Spring, in 2000, she launched a petition calling for gender equality in Tunisian inheritance law. As a lawyer, she took up the fight for legal equality between women and men in Tunisia during and after the Arab Spring and is committed to upholding human dignity, both in Tunisia and internationally.
Today, Yosra Frawes is the first Tunisian woman to serve as executive director of the Tunis office of the international organization Fédération Internationale pour les Droits Humains (FIDH) for the Maghreb and the Middle East. Until July 2021, she was also president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD).
Yosra Frawes played a key role in Tunisia’s transition process as a lawyer and dedicated herself to combating human rights violations and inequalities. Law 58 on the elimination of violence against women was passed in 2017 —in part thanks to her involvement —as part of the National Coalition to Combat Violence Against Women, a historic achievement. But for Yosra Frawes, this was not enough: after all, any law is only as good as its implementation.
Yosra advocates for the protection of everyone’s rights. For example, she played a role in securing the release of Jabeur Mejri. In 2012, he had been accused of undermining public morals and defaming and disrupting public order for posting caricatures of Muhammad on social media. In addition, Yosra Frawes repeatedly denounces draconian abuses and defends women who have been victims of violence. For many years, she has therefore also worked at a specialized counseling center run by the ATFD. For a long time, the center was the only one of its kind in Tunisia and groundbreaking in the Maghreb region. Giving a voice to women who have become particularly vulnerable as a result of the violence they have suffered, and helping them obtain justice and redress, is Yosra Frawes’s core mission.
She is also convinced that human rights are indivisible. She categorically rejects the idea of weighing one fundamental right against another—this applies in particular to sexual rights. Yosra Frawes identifies as an intersectional feminist who considers the various forms of discrimination and criminalization in conjunction with one another. She is one of the first feminists in Tunisia, the Maghreb, and the Middle East to pave the way for LGBTQI++ activists to join the feminist movement. She is one of the founding members of the Civil Collective for Individual Liberties (CCLI) and succeeded in involving the first Tunisian LGBTQI++ rights organizations in the founding of this influential collective.
In Tunisia, human rights and women’s rights have been strengthened by the new constitution. However, there are still significant gaps between what is on paper and the daily reality for women. Civil and criminal law must also undergo further reform. Debates on these issues take place against the backdrop of a largely traditionalist social culture and a predominantly conservative judiciary. President Kais Said’s seizure of power has also led to a temporary end to the separation of powers, which complicates all efforts to implement the rights enshrined in the constitution. For Yosra Frawes and her fellow activists, it is therefore a matter of urgency to defend the gains made so far.
By awarding the Anne Klein Women’s Prize to Yosra Frawes, we wish to strengthen and encourage Tunisia’s feminist movements. Women* in the MENA region have been fighting for decades for their rights, against exclusion, and for equality at all political and social levels.
We stand with them on this path with our unwavering solidarity.
