Tunisia, a North African country, is demarcated by the Mediterranean to the north and east, Libya to the south-east and Algeria to the west. The Mediterranean climate is characterized by irregular rainfall and a dry period (5 to 6 months a year in the north and 7 to 9 months in the centre and south). Rainfall, from September to March, varies between 1200 mm in the north and 50 mm in the south. Natural plant formations are more important and more diversified in the north.
The total surface area is 16.4 million hectares, of which 42% is uncultivated land. Productive land only occupies 9 million hectares. Erosion is very marked and much soil (around 46%) shows signs of a fall in fertility. Desertification is on the rise in the centre and south of the country, the result of a mix of over-exploitation of plant resources and unsuitable agricultural practices.
In 1995, the population stood at 9 million inhabitants, of whom 39% lived in rural areas (67% in 1956). Annual population growth is 1.8%. The actively employed population represents 23.3% of the total, while the annual growth rate is 3%.
In terms of gross domestic product (GDP), Tunisia ranks 66th out of 174 developing countries and the Human Development Index (HDI) places the country 75th (UNDP, 1995). GDP grew by 4% annually between 1986 and 1996. A policy of economic liberalization has stimulated private enterprise and encouraged foreign investment. From 190 million dollars in the period 1982-1986, the figure rose to 508 million dollars in the period 1992-1995. Economic development efforts have been accompanied by a strong social policy. The country earmarks close to 25% of its budget for education and 5.9% for health. In 1993-1994, the global schooling rate (6-13 year-olds) was 91% and 82% for girls; (complementary socio-economic indicators in Annex 1).
The cultivated surface area is around 5 million hectares, 30.5% of the total. Irrigated cultivation occupies 7% of this area. The major farming activities are in cereals, vegetables, olives, tree cultivation and animal breeding (sheep, cattle and goats). The population active in the primary sector is 21.6% (National Statistics Institute, 1994). The agricultural sector represents 15% of GDP and 14% of foreign trade. These rates are on the decline to the advantage of the secondary and tertiary sectors (manufacturing industry, services, tourism) which are growing rapidly.
Although agriculture is largely dependent on climatic hazards, it is still considered of prime importance for the food self-sufficiency of the country. Incentives have been introduced in investment codes and methods of rural financing to stimulate the expansion of agricultural activities.
Forest zones represent just over one-third of the total territory. grazng land and forests cover respectively 82% and 18% of this area. The rate of afforestation is 5.1% of the total surface area of the country. Forest zones, which are heavily populated (an average population density of 80 to 200 inhabitants per sq. km.), offer very diversified forest products and by-products: cork, wood, forage, aromatic plants (rosemary, myrtle), pine seeds, mushrooms, capers. Their economic value is obvious. Tunisia exports essential plant oils, essence of turpentine, mushrooms, capers and carob to Europe (France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, etc.).
The most important forest production zone is the Kroumirie-Mogods region (the case study zone, see Annex 2). Despite its environmental, forestry and pastoral potential, it is the most affected by poverty and degradation of natural resources and eco-systems. Development intervention bodies1 have increasingly turned to a participatory and integrated approach and the concepts of agro-forestry, science and integrated development practice2.
Agro-forestry resources have an unquestionable value. They permit satisfaction of the basic needs of the population living in forest zones. At the same time, agro-forestry is an activity in which the importance of the role played by women is recognized. In fact, most maintenance activities and rehabilitation of production systems based on subsistence and use of forest resources are carried out by women. Further, the greater part of the work force used to develop forest by-products is female. However, women are not sufficiently involved in the dynamics of development and their role remains marginal, even though they ought necessarily to be involved as decisive actors given the weight of their activities in the forest sector.
Participation of civil society in development
The first years of Tunisia's independence saw the birth of a nation-State, symbol of the country's identity. Traditional organizations such as tribes saw their prerogatives and influence dwindle to the advantage of the state apparatus. Institutions and political and administrative structures became "compulsory transit" for the citizen to the detriment of civil society.
Since 1973, Tunisia has fixed five-year economic and social development plans. Orientations for rural development have been established. In the course of the 1970s, the essential strategic lines were the promotion of employment and income improvement for the deprived population. However, the programmes implemented did not bring the expected results. This led the government to draw up integrated rural development programmes (IRDPs) in which a link was established between living conditions and promotion of productive activities. Despite this new concept and decentralization of development efforts at regional level, real participation of the population and the difficulty of capitalizing on acquired experience became evident. With the economic crisis of the 1980s and an opening up toward greater democratization, the State then began an attempt to mobilize civil society, thus coming into line with an international trend. Attempts at the participatory approach, supported by NGOs, increased.
The political changes of 7 November 1987 and the adoption of a structural adjustment programme coincided with the 7th Development Plan (1987-1991). The withdrawal of the State to the advantage of private sector actors and the promotion of people's organizations became the principal orientations of development. Reforms to mobilize human resources and enhance potentialities affected the economic sector as much as administration, the political world and the juridical system. Decentralization of decision-making and management bodies transferred full power for the design and implementation of development plans to the regions and local communities. As a result, starting with the 8th Development Plan (992-1996), national consultation took off. All social forces were approached for an input to the definition and elaboration of development strategy. Integration of women and promotion of their economic and social role became central to this process.
NGO involvement in rural development
The involvement of NGOs in the project process has not stopped growing. Cooperation with state rural development bodies has been established and given concrete shape through agreements with, among others, APEH, FSDA, the Kef Foundation for Rural Development (KFRD) and the Tunisian Foundation for Community Development. Numerous projects have been implemented within this framework3 and demonstrate the willingness for partnership.
Public communities in the rural setting
The absence of community organization in the rural setting led the State to set it up. The rural council (at sector level), the local development council (at delegation level) and reinforcement of the regional council (at governorate level), constitute the links in a chain that connects the population to regional power centres (cf. Annex 3, Organization of the Public Community). This organization aims to ensure coordination and coherence between projects. It reinforces the process of decentralization by offering a framework for the participation of communities in local and regional development. Legislation gives administrations a consultative role in "communicating the concerns of citizens and proposing solutions".
People's organization
The structuring of the public community has been an important step for involving rural populations in development. However, this has not yet led the population to the role of real partner for self-development. In fact, within the perspective of local integrated participatory development strategy, the territorial scale of each organizational level goes well beyond the space occupied by grassroots sociological groups. This is why, in order to complete the administrative plan, other forms of organization have been started at a level that is closer to rural communities. These are:
· development committees (still at an informal stage) set up by projects at the level of land farmed by a rural village (douar) or group of villages (the OSPDNW, FSDA and APEH projects); the generalization of development committees within projects is under way within the framework of National Solidarity Programme 2626;
· collective interest forestry associations (CIFA) envisaged under the review of the Forestry Code of 1988;
· associations for water and soil conservation (AWSC) envisaged under Law No 095-70 of 17 July 1995 (to date, none have been set up).
Older formal organizations are still promoted by the State to stimulate the participation of farmers in the management of production, equipment and resources4. These are:
· collective interest associations (CIA), self-management bodies for public irrigation and drinking water conveyance areas;
· agricultural service organizations, organizations of producers and firms.
Main experiences of participatory rural development
Adoption of an integrated participatory approach for the implementation of rural development and natural resource management projects has encouraged the participation of women. The main experience in this field is represented by OSPDNW. Since 1990, it has been setting up village committees to integrate the population (men and women) in the planning and programming of activities. The range of a committee is limited to the village (douar), which forms a homogeneous sociological group and territorial unit. It is made up of men and women chosen by the population and is a body that represents the community. It plays the role of "interlocutor/decision-maker" and acts on a contractual basis. Women are systematically involved in all stages of the process.
The most recent (1995) experience of DGF involves a dozen pilot integrated rural development operations in the forest zones of the centre and north of the country (forestry development project co-financed by the World Bank). DGF called on national NGOs to start the process of integrated participatory development with populations in order to define the contents of projects. Their implementation began this year.
Since Tunisia's independence, the improvement of the status of women has continued to be a priority for the policy of human resource promotion. The Personal Status Code promulgated in 1956 directed reform toward equality between men and women. It is regularly updated. Polygamy, forced marriage and unilateral divorce have been abolished; judiciary divorce has been introduced; the rights of divorced women to the custody of children have been reinforced. These legal acquisitions have been extended to the Tunisian Constitution, work code and the promotion of women's associations.
At the institutional level, the Ministry for Women and Family Affairs (MWFA), linked to the Prime Minister's office (1992), designs national policy for the promotion of women and families, and oversees that it is respected and that laws in this field are improved. It provides advice and coordinates programmes and activities for integrating women in different development sectors. The Centre for Women's Research, Studies, Documentation and Information (CWRSDI), set up in 1991, acts as an observer of the condition of Tunisian women.
Tunisia has aligned itself with international policy vis-à-vis the status of women, adapting it to the Arab-Muslim context of the country. In 1991, it ratified the Copenhagen convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW, 1985). In 1992, Tunisia participated in the Geneva summit on the economic advancement of rural women, subscribing to the principles of the equal contribution of rural women to democracy and socio-economic development.
Women occupy an increasingly important place in public life. Prolonged schooling and political willingness have encouraged their access to political positions (17% of members of parliament are women) and to public structures. All committees of the Destourian Party contain women members. The Tunisian Agricultural and Fisheries Union (TAFU), a professional trade union, has created a National Federation of Women Agricultural Workers, with 15 regional delegations all run by women.
Rural women and socio-economic development
It is difficult to draw a standard profile of the rural Tunisian woman. Major regional differences exist between socio-cultural contexts and methods and systems of production. Statistical data furnished by the Ministry of Agriculture do not interpret these differences but they highlight the place of women in the agricultural sector (see Annex 1). If women only represent 5% of farming heads, they constitute 64.3% of agricultural family workers (unpaid labour). Women increasingly form part of the temporary agricultural wage earning sector (greenhouses, intensive open field irrigated cultivation).
Traditionally, women's main tasks are carried out at home and in agriculture. Women are more and more frequently "de facto family heads", given the seasonal or permanent exodus of men and their double activities. They bear an excess of responsibilities and work at the level of family farming. Women, first and foremost a pool of labour, rarely have access to the means of capitalization that are the land and livestock. For the country taken as a whole, less than 15% of women own land. In the forest zones, this percentage is lower. Land has always been inherited. Most women decide to give up their part of inheritance to brothers in order to avoid the dispersal of the family patrimony. The absence of capital, the lack of spatial mobility, the insufficiency of training/information, the persistence of illiteracy are brakes on women's access to production factors and support measures: supplies, marketing, credit, popularization, etc.
Women play a dominant role in reproduction and household management, agricultural and extra-agricultural production and community services. The weight of these responsibilities often hinders women from investing in the development process in the same way as men. The growing "visibility" of women in agricultural activities has led to a progressive awareness of the particular importance of their socio-economic role in the dynamics of rural development. From passive, socially-assisted beneficiaries, they have gained the status of active economic actors in modern agriculture and regional development.
The policy of rural women's advancement advocates their integration in an equitable and sustainable development process. At the time of drawing up the 8th and 9th five-year plans, cross-cutting "Women and Development" commissions were set up to deal with each field of development. A "Rural Women" sub-commission has been created. With the adoption of an increasingly wider participatory approach, a number of projects are now developing5:
· "advancement of rural women" components, with specific activities: training, popularization, credit, organization;
· "community development" components open to gender issues;
· strategies that take women as much as men into account as beneficiaries and actors at different stages of the project cycle through activities related to development, training, organization, etc.
The majority of these projects are in the initial or test phase. It is too early to draw conclusions. However, they indicate the willingness to take gender questions into account in development approaches.
1 These are the Office for Silvipastoral Development in the North-West (OSPDNW), the Directorate-General for Forestry (DGF), the Ministry of Agriculture and several NGOs: the Foundation for Self-Development and Solidarity (FSDA) and the Association for the Promotion of Employment and Housing (APEH).
2 Agro-forestry is defined as "an integrated system for the development and management of rural space, associating tress and the practices of agricultural production, and applying methods of intervention that are compatible with the conditions of the rural population" (Maghrebian seminar on agro-forestry, Tunis 1989)
3 For example, the Sidi Bouzid and Siliana micro-credit projects co-financed by the French Development Fund (FDF); the development project for the north-west mountainous zones co-financed by the World Bank; the pilot integrated rural development initiatives in forest zones, in cooperation with the Directorate-General for Forestry (DGF), set up recently; etc.
4 The association and presence of women in these organizations is limited, if not non-existent
- natural resource management projects: pilot integrated development operations of the forestry development project, the project for the development of mountainous zones in the North-West (OSPDNW), the project for the management of natural resources and water and soil conservation;
- projects of integrated agricultural development in the regions of Kasserine, Kairouan, Kef, Siliana, Sidi Bouzid, Zaghouan, etc.
