Youssef Chahed (: يوسف الشاهد; born 18 September 1975) is a politician who served as the 14th from 27 August 2016 to 27 February 2020. He served as Secretary of State for Fisheries and Minister of Local Affairs in the past. Since the revolution in January 2011, Prime Minister Chahed has fought for press freedom, speech freedom, and the preservation of civil rights in Tunisia. He successfully oversaw a campaign against terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda and ISIS during his mandate. In the Arab world, he was a leader in the struggle against mafia barons, smugglers, and corruption. He was able to address Tunisia's public budget challenges in spite of a challenging economic environment by utilizing a program that Tunisia had signed with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
He was a member of the party until he formed . By profession, he is an agricultural engineer, researcher and university professor. He was elected president of the newly founded party on 2 June 2019.
Education and career
[]Born in Tunis in 1975, Youssef Chahed studied to become an at the , where he graduated as valedictorian in 1998.
He then joined the in . He graduated in 1999, obtaining a (DEA) in and and in 2003 a in Agricultural Economics under the direction of Jean-Christophe Bureau. The title of his DEA was "Measuring the impact on the welfare of tariff cuts on agricultural products: an application of the Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI) to the ," and his doctoral thesis was on "measuring the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on trade and welfare".
Until 2009, he taught at the Higher Institute of Agriculture in France and in other countries as a visiting professor. He speaks , , , and fluently.
Prime minister
[]On 6 August 2016, after President of the Government lost a confidence vote in parliament, Chahed was nominated by the party to succeed Essid as head of the Government. On 26 August 2016, his Government was approved by the with 167 votes in favour out of 194 votes cast and he was therefore appointed prime minister by the , . Chahed has been described as "previously unknown" in the political scene before this role.
During his mandate, Youssef Chahed tried to restore the authority of the State undermined by the governance of the Troika (2011-2014). He prohibited the entry on Tunisian soil of many extremist predicators including Wajdi Ghnim. In 2019, Youssef Chahed banned the wearing of the niqab, the full face veil, in public institutions for security reasons, After this decision, he received numerous death threats.
Nate Grubman, a scholar at Stanford University, writes about Chahed's tenure as prime minister:
"As prime minister, Chahed initially tried to portray himself as an anticorruption warrior. His first shot was the arrest of businessman Chafik Jarraya and a number of others allegedly involved in smuggling. But it was difficult to discern whether Chahed's move against Jarraya was a neutral application of the law or an attempt to hamstring his political rivals."
In 2017, Chahed Government passes historic law to end violence against women and girls. It is a unique achievement in the Muslim Arab world
In 2018, Chahed government, proposed a law on the “Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination”. On October 9, Tunisia's parliament passed the law, which defines and criminalizes racial discrimination. It is an important step forward in defending the rights of the 10 to 15 percent of Tunisians who identify as black, as well as the country's 60,000 sub-Saharan African immigrants.
In 2019, the Chahed government banned the after the . The same year, Chahed announced his candidacy for the .
Dr. Youssef Chahed, has been named a 2022-2024 Senior Fellow with the Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. During his fellowship, Chahed will focus on economic, security, and other policy challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa and will lead a study group on development and democratic transitions. He will also meet regularly with Harvard students and student groups and will speak at events across campus.
Austerity
[]In 2018 protests erupted as a reaction to the newly passed Finance Act which took effect on 1 January, that raised taxes on , , housing, internet usage, hotel rooms and foods such as fruits and vegetables. Customs taxes on cosmetics and some agricultural products were also raised.
The , an alliance of opposition parties, called for continued protests against the government's "unjust" austerity measures while Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed denounced the violence and appealed for calm, claiming that he and his government believes that 2018 "would be the last difficult year for the Tunisians".
- Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
