Recently, there have been many “mass protests,” particularly in countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

A mass protest is when many people (often hundreds of thousands) gather in a city to show their government that they don’t like it, or that they don’t agree with something it is doing.

In Tunisia protests began last December, to force the country’s president to leave. The people were upset because they had no jobs, food was too expensive and many people in the government could not be trusted. The protest worked and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family were forced to leave Tunisia. They are accused of having stolen money and property.