Context and why it matters
A scientific and charitable association is only as credible as its way of deciding. At TIPCS, the Board of Directors meets once a year in an elective meeting, and the meeting of Tuesday 26 October 2021 is the first one this website records. It took place at TIPCS’s Conference Center in Monastir, under the banner “Board of Directors, Annual Elective Meeting 2021”.
The meeting was held before the association’s registration notice appeared in the Official Gazette (JORT n° 135, 15 November 2022). TIPCS publishes it now so that members, partners and funders can see how the Board has met and voted over the years, one page per assembly.
The room and the opening
The photographs show a meeting room set up for a working session: tables dressed with white cloths, bottles of water, laptops and a projector, and a projection screen on which the title slide of the meeting is visible. In one image a participant stands beside the screen and presents; in others, participants sit at their tables, some taking notes.
We name no participant here: the captions and the banner give none, and the page is written from what is visible.
A participant presents beside the projection screen, which shows the title slide of the meeting.
The vote: raised cards and a ballot box
Two forms of voting are visible. In a first series, participants seated at several tables raise coloured cards in a show of hands. In a second series, a transparent ballot box with a red lid is presented, tilted toward the camera so that it appears empty, then participants prepare and fill in paper slips at their tables and, one after another, drop them into the box while two colleagues stand beside it.
What the photographs cannot tell is the subject of each vote, the candidates and the result. Those points belong to the minutes (see below).
Participants raise coloured cards in a show of hands. 
Slips are cast into the red-lidded box, two participants standing beside it.
The Board and the record: what is documented
Documented today: the date, the place, the title of the meeting (banner and album caption) and the photographs themselves, published on TIPCS’s Facebook page on 8 November 2021. Everything else is to be completed from the minutes, and we do not guess:
- agenda of the meeting: to be completed from the minutes;
- quorum and attendance sheet: to be completed from the minutes;
- posts voted on, candidates and results: to be completed from the minutes;
- composition of the Board after the vote and names: to be completed from the minutes.
What this shows about TIPCS’s governance
Four practices can be read in these images. A body is convened at a fixed place and date. It deliberates around tables, with a shared screen. It decides by vote, with raised cards and a ballot box that appears empty before use. And it publishes photographs of the session, a record that anyone can look at.
Governance is also honesty about gaps. This page does not claim a result it cannot prove; it names the records still to be deposited and invites members to ask for them.
Group photograph in front of the projection screen showing the meeting slide.
Questions, corrections and removal requests
Members who attended can help complete this page. Corrections, questions about the record, or a request to remove a photograph in which you appear should be sent to Contact@tipcs.org.
Governance and legal frame
Under Decree-Law 2011-88 of 24 September 2011 on associations, the General Assembly is the supreme body of the association. What an assembly decides should be provable, which is why minutes, attendance records and reports matter.
The same decree-law sets the records and publications that follow from an assembly: changes to the statutes are notified within one month and made public (art. 16); conflicts of interest are addressed (art. 18); accounts follow the enterprise accounting system (art. 39) and registers are kept (art. 40); foreign funding is published within one month of the decision or receipt and notified to the Secretary-General of the Government (art. 41); documents are kept for ten years (art. 42); and above 100,000 TND an auditor is appointed by the ordinary General Assembly for three years, with publication of the statements and the audit report within one month of approval (art. 43).
Personal data are governed by Organic Law 2004-63: photographs of identifiable people are published by TIPCS with a removal channel (Contact@tipcs.org).
Where TIPCS stands. Documented: the convened meeting of 26 October 2021, its place and title, and 79 published photographs showing the vote. Still to be deposited with this page: the minutes, the attendance sheet, the agenda, the vote results and the reports presented. The statutory rules on convening, quorum and majority are to be checked against the TIPCS statutes and, where needed, by a lawyer.
