Amira Yahyaoui

When she was 16, Yahyaoui started a blog criticizing the regime of Ben Ali and highlighting its human rights abuses. She gained prominence in Tunisia as an anti censorship and pro freedom of expression activist. Due to her attacks on the government, she was repeatedly targeted by government agencies. While still a teenager, she was tailed by the state’s secret police and beaten for her activism.

Yahyaoui is a 2016 Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, a Middle East and North Africa advisor for Amnesty International and a board member of UNHCR’s Advisory Group on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection. She has received many international awards for her activism, including Vital Voices Trailblazer Female Leadership award, the Foundation Chirac Prize for Conflict Prevention, and has been selected multiple times as one world’s most powerful and influential Arab and African women.

Amira Yahyaoui was named co-chair of the World Economic Forum 2016 Annual Meeting, around the theme of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She led the forum alongside business leaders including Mary Barra (CEO, General Motors), Satya Nadella (CEO, Microsoft), Hiroaki Nakanishi (Chairman and CEO, Hitachi), and Tidjane Thiam (CEO, Credit Suisse).

The Fourth Industrial Revolution became a much debated theme in the business and policy circles after the forum. Multiple books were published on the subject, and on October 10, 2016 the World Economic Forum announced the opening of its new Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco.

Yahyaoui founded the NGO Al Bawsala (translated to "The Compass" in Arabic) in 2012., to monitor the work of the Constituent Assembly. In the following years, Al Bawsala became one of the most prominent NGOs in the Middle East. Al Bawsala's use of technology for social progress has been recognized by many awards from international organizations such as the World Summit Award.

As Ben Ali fled the country on January 14, 2011, Amira got her passport back exactly the same day and moved back to Tunisia right away.

New elections were called to form a new Tunisian Parliament and write a constitution for the new democratic regime. Several months after coming back to Tunisia, Yahyaoui ran in the 2011 Constituent Assembly election as an independent candidate to raise awareness about the importance of the constitutional debate. Her campaign list used multiple media channels to call out the lack of attention political parties were paying to the writing of the new Tunisian Constitution.

While in exile, Amira Yahyaoui cofounded the Nhar 3la 3mmar, a protest against censorship that took place in many cities around the world in May 2010. The event was organized to promote visibility around the human rights issue of freedom of expression, and even though it was not originally presented as a demonstration against the government, it became the most prominent movement for freedom of expression in Tunisia. It was very closely followed by the Tunisian police, and several activists were arrested.

During the Tunisian revolution that started on December 17, 2010, Amira Yahyaoui used her online platform to raise awareness about human rights abuses and executions in her country, debating Ben Ali's representatives on TV and lobbying the international community to stand by the Tunisian protesters.

Yahyaoui comes from a family of human rights activists. Her father Mokhtar Yahyaoui was an opponent to the government of former Tunisian President Ben Ali. He was dismissed after writing about the lack of justice in Tunisia, and put under constant house surveillance for years. Her cousin Zouhair Yahyaoui was an economist who founded the satirical website TUNeZINE. He died in 2005 after being persecuted and tortured by the government for his objections to censorship in Tunisia.

Amira Yahyaoui (born August 6, 1984) is a Tunisian entrepreneur, blogger and human rights activist. She was previously the Founder and President of Al Bawsala, a multi-awarded transparency and accountability NGO.