The ILD would like to send a big congratulations to Wided Bouchamaoui, founder of the Maghreb Council for Inclusive Entrepreneurship, who was  one of the four winners in Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. The award was granted to them based on their efforts  in Tunisia's peaceful democratic transition after the Arab Spring. The Council groups the most important business institutions in Algeria, Morocco,  Tunisia, Mauritania and Libya.

 The ILD is proud to have worked with Bouchamaoui and the Council in a partnership agreement in July 2013. We were happy to give advise on our experience in helping Tunisia with the help of the Council integrate the large informal sector of their economies into formality. The Council was convinced that this affected not only economic growth, social and regional integration, but also peace and stability in the region.

This initiative resulted from the joint work of UTICA--Tunisia’s confederation of entrepreneurs and artisans, chaired by Mrs. Bouchamaoui--and the ILD, which between 2012 and 2013 carried out in depth research and finalized proposals on the root causes of the Arab Spring and the need for economic integration to achieve peace and stability in Tunisia. These studies revealed that over 85% of companies in Tunisia were extralegal with assets estimated at US $22 million; also, the value of informal land was totaled at US $93 million, the equivalent to 4 times the foreign direct investment in the country since 1976.

As part of its campaign to publicize these ideas, the ILD and UTICA conducted widespread presentations and interviews in the media with the participation of the main opinion makers, politicians in power, opposition parties, journalists, academics, and micro and small entrepreneur organizations that were working on incorporating the excluded from the legal and economic world as they saw it as vital to the country’s peace process. In the end, these findings were collected from the political agenda of the various actors who have successfully implemented them leading to a peaceful transition to democracy in Tunisia.

The ILD continues to be involved in working with UTICA and the Tunisian CONFIEP. To read more about their work together see our publication 'The Facts are in on the Arab Spring

Hernando de Soto (President of the ILD), Wided Bouchamaoui (recent Nobel Peace Prize), Hamadi Jebali (then Prime Minister of Tunisia) and Norman Pearlstine (Bloomberg Businessweek), at a conference in Tunisia on the importance of incorporating the informal sector.

Carla Olivieri (former Communications Director ILD), Wided Bouchamaoui (recent Nobel Peace Prize) and Ana Lucia Camaiora (Legal Director ILD) in Tunisia attending a meeting on setting up a program together.