Yadh Ben Achour

Yadh Ben Achour (Arabic: عياض بن عاشور‎, also Iyadh Ben Achour, born 1 June 1945) is a Tunisian lawyer, expert on public law and Islamic political theory. President of the Higher Political Reform Commission of Tunisia, he is then member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Biography

Yadh Ben Achour was born in La Marsa into a family of scholars, magistrates and high officials of the Tunisian high bourgeoisie. His father Mohamed Fadhel Ben Achour was the Mufti of Tunisia from 1962 to 1970. His Grandfather Muhammad al-Tahir ibn Ashur was one of the most renowned modern-era graduates of University of Ez-Zitouna and one of the great Islamic scholars of the 20th century.

In 1992, Yadh Ben Achour resigned from the Constitutional Council on the grounds of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's attempt to control the Tunisian Human Rights League through a reform of the law on associations. From 1993 to 1999 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Legal, Political and Social Sciences at the University of Carthage.

Member of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts, of the tunisian Economic and Social Council and of the Board of Senghor University. He is elected as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2012^[1].

On January 17, 2011 Mohamed Ghannouchi, the Prime Minister of Tunisia, appointed him to be the president of Tunisia's Higher Political Reform Commission, which is charged with overseeing constitutional reform in post-Ben Ali Tunisia^[2][3][4][5].

Ziad al-Doulatli, spokesman for the Tunisian Ennahda Movement, an Islamist group, voiced criticism of Ben Achour saying that he was "known for his Francophone and secular leanings and his hostility towards religion"^[6].

Honours and awards

Published works

• L’État nouveau et la philosophie politique et juridique occidentale, ed. Bibliothèque de droit et de sciences politiques et économiques, Tunis, 1980
• Politique, religion et droit dans le monde arabe, ed. Cérès, Tunis, 1992
• Normes, foi et loi en particulier dans l'islam, ed. Cérès, Tunis, 1993
• Contentieux administratif, ed. Cérès, Tunis, 1995
• (ar) Conscience et droit : l’esprit civique et les droits modernes, ed. Centre culturel arabe, Beyrouth/Casablanca, 1998
• Le rôle des civilisations dans le système international : droit et relations internationales, ed. Bruylant, Bruxelles, 2003
• Introduction générale au droit, ed. Centre de publication universitaire, Tunis, 2005
• La Cour européenne des droits de l'homme et la liberté de religion, ed. Pedone, Paris, 2005
• Aux fondements de l'orthodoxie sunnite, ed. Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 2008
• Droit administratif, ed. Centre de publication universitaire, Tunis, 2010
• (it) La tentazione democratica. Politica, religione e diritto nel mondo arabo, ed. Ombre Corte, Vérone, 2010
• La deuxième Fâtiha. L'islam et la pensée des droits de l'homme, ed. Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 2011
• Tunisie : une révolution en pays d’islam, ed. Cérès, Tunis, 2016
• An International Constitutional Court: Bulwark against the Erosion of Constitutional Democracy, in Constitutionalism, Human Rights and Islam after the Arab Spring(eds. Rainer Grote, Tilmann Röder and Ali El-Haj, Oxford/New York: OUP 2016)
• Quel islam pour l'Europe ? (with François Dermange), ed. Labor et Fides, Paris, 2017

References