ABSTRACT
After it was alluded to, for the first time, by the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, the right to a healthy environment has been included in many regional agreements, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981). Several countries have revised their constitutions to include a substantive right to a healthy environment as a promising approach to ensure economic development is consistent with respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms. Tunisia has ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which proclaims, among others, that all people have the right to a generally satisfactory environment favourable to their development. Although this right is entrenched in its Constitution of 2014, Tunisia faces unwanted consequences of economic growth, such as heightened air pollution, depletion, and destruction of renewable and non-renewable natural resources, raising questions about the legal protections of the right to a healthy environment. The chapter examines how the right to a healthy environment enjoys legal protection in Tunisia. Poor environmental performance in Tunisia suggests that the right faces some obstacles to implementation, including weak rules. The government of Tunisia must take bold action to create, implement, and enforce more robust and comprehensive environmental laws, including recourse if this right is infringed. While this chapter could be more extensive from a scholarly standpoint, it offers critical legal insights valuable to Africa’s present and future environmental and human rights defenders, legal practitioners, and policymakers.
