Abolition of the legacy of slavery: ‘Atig’ no more

by Slim Kacem | 2022 | 13 min

The Dali family has been fighting for years to abolish the traces of slavery that persist to this day. In October 2020, a historic judgement was given in favour of Mr Hemdane Dali, 83, from Djerba, who claimed the right to remove the name ‘Atig’ (meaning ‘freed by’) from his family name in all official documents; Hemdane Dali’s family continued the legal procedures to get rid of ‘Atig’.

With the support of Minority Rights Group International and the Mnemty association, Kerim Dali, Hemdane Dali’s son, succeeded in abolishing the expression ‘Atig’ from his name, which used to be ‘Kerim Atig Dali’, and changed it to ‘Kerim Dali’, following the reform judgment handed down by the civil status judge at the Court of First Instance in Medenine on 26 June 2021. Kerim’s siblings pursued the same procedure to free themselves from the stigma of the term ‘Atig’.