Man can drop part of name denoting slave ancestry, Tunisian court rules

Reuters in Tunis
Fri 16 Oct 2020 17.59 BST

A court in Tunisia has allowed an 81-year-old man to remove a word from his name that marked him out as descended from slaves, in the country’s first ruling of its kind, his lawyer has said.

Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, but critics say it has not done enough to address racism against black Tunisians, who make up 10-15% of the population and are mostly descended from slaves.

Campaigners said the case brought by Hamden Dali would open the door for others who wanted to drop the word “atig”, or “liberated by”, which originally denoted a freed slave and forms part of the names of many Tunisian families.

Dali’s lawyer, Hanen Ben Hassena, said the association with slavery was an assault on human dignity and the man’s adult children had faced discrimination because of the family name, which had made it harder to get jobs.

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