Amira Yahyaoui is a Tunisian peace activist and president of Al Bawsala, an NGO that monitors the constitutional assembly and parliament to protect the free expression of the Tunisian people and advocate or human rights. Yahyaoui has been a tireless advocate for freedom of expression for over a decade. She comes from a family of human rights activists; when she was 16, her father, a judge, was forced from his job for speaking out against then-President Ben Ali. While still a teenager, Yahyaoui was tailed by secret police and beaten for her activism; ultimately, she sought refuge in Paris and was banned from her homeland for four years. Following her country’s revolution, Yahyaoui became an independent youth candidate in Tunisia’s first free election.
