Youssef Chahed

Youssef Chahed (يوسف الشاهد; born 18 September 1975) is a Tunisian politician who served as the 14th Prime Minister of Tunisia from 27 August 2016 to 27 February 2020. Prime Minister Youssef Chahed was the Republic of Tunisia's youngest-ever chosen head of government. 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 Nidaa Tounes party until he formed Tahya Tounes. By profession, he is an agricultural engineer, researcher and university professor. He was elected president of the newly founded Tahya Tounes party on 2 June 2019.

Education and career
Born in Tunis in 1975, Youssef Chahed studied to become an agricultural engineer at the National Agricultural Institute of Tunisia, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1998.

He then joined the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in France. He graduated in 1999, obtaining a postgraduate diploma (DEA) in environmental economics and resource and in 2003 a PhD 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 economy of the European Union," and his doctoral thesis was on "measuring the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on trade and welfare".

Until 2009, he taught agricultural economics at the Higher Institute of Agriculture in France and in other countries as a visiting professor. He speaks Arabic, French, English, and Italian fluently.

Prime Minister
On 6 August 2016, after President of the Government Habib Essid overwhelmingly lost a confidence vote in parliament, Chahed was nominated by the Nidaa Tounes party to succeed Essid as President of the Government. On 26 August 2016, his Government was approved by the Assembly of People's Representatives with 167 votes in favour out of 194 votes cast and he was therefore appointed Prime Minister by the President of Tunisia, Beji Caid Essebsi. 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 Muslm 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 burka after the 2019 Tunis bombings. The same year, Chahed announced his candidacy for the Tunisian presidency.

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 gasoline, phone cards, housing, internet usage, hotel rooms and foods such as fruits and vegetables. Customs taxes on cosmetics and some agricultural products were also raised.

The Popular Front, an alliance of leftist 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".