Written by: Hisham Al-Harati, legal advisor at Zikum Zina Organization for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
To those seeking a legal opinion on Decision No. (25) of 2025 issued by the Government of National Unity regarding the update of categories eligible for the basic pension established under Law No. (16) of 1985 and its amendments, I simply say:
This decision claims to regulate social protection, yet begins by reducing it—as if justice is achieved by decreasing the number of beneficiaries rather than protecting them.
The title is grand—update, development, justice—but the substance says otherwise. The narrower the criteria become, the more we are told they are more precise. Yet law, especially constitutional law, is judged not by intentions but by its impact—and the impact here is clearly negative on the most vulnerable groups, through exclusion and reduction of eligible beneficiaries.
Social rights are not temporary grants to be reshaped according to administrative discretion; they establish stable legal positions, and the state is obligated to safeguard them, not to reassess beneficiaries through committees and varying evaluations from one place to another. When eligibility becomes dependent on vague terms such as “ability to cope,” we are not regulating the right but emptying it of its substance, because the ability to cope socially does not equate to the ability to live economically.
Constitutional principles also prohibit regression in rights except with real guarantees—not with general wording or conditional justice that may or may not be applied. Internationally, the standard is simple: there should be no rollback on minimum rights.
Therefore, if this is regulation, why do beneficiaries feel threatened? And if this is justice, why does its cost fall on the most vulnerable?
Accordingly, are we facing real reform, or merely a reorganization of figures under polished titles, while ignoring the far greater issue of tens of billions in smuggled funds?
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