Born in Tunis, Kamel Idir was a player and captain of the handball section of Club Africain. He was also an international playing for the Tunisian national team in the 1970s, winning the African Men's Handball Championship in 1974. Having joined the club's management, he spent seven years on the board of directors with Farid Abbes and Chérif Bellamine, including one year as head of the youth center and three as first vice-president.
When Bellamine resigned, following the successive failures of the football section, expressed by the absence of a title (the last National Championship won in 1996 and the last Tunisian Cup won in 2000), he served as interim president from 26 November 2005 to 23 June 2010, the date of the elective general meeting. Subsequently, he was re-elected for two two-year terms, the last of which ended in 2010. Under his presidency, the football team managed to win the 2007–08 Tunisian Ligue Professionnelle 1, twelve years after the last victory in 1996, and the North African Cup of Champions in 2008. In addition, he chaired the organizing committee of the 2005 World Men's Handball Championship held in Tunisia. In August 2024, FIFA appointed him to be the president of the Normalization Committee it had set up to manage the affairs of the Tunisian Football Federation.[3]
Kamel Idir, who holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Pharmacy in Grenoble, teaches galenic pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Monastir and holds the positions of Inspector General of Public Health and Director General of Pharmacy and Medicines at the Ministry of Health, as well as an expert at the World Health Organization and a permanent member of the National Medicines Commission. He also participates in the publication of several works, including the Tunisian Therapeutic Formulary (first and second editions) and the Guide to Medicines, and gives more than a hundred conferences. He received the 2010 Francophone Pharmacy Prize awarded by the French Academy of Pharmacy.
Idir's political career was marked by his vice-presidency of the municipality of Tunis, between 1995 and 2005. He was also a member of the central committee of the Democratic Constitutional Rally, the party in power under the presidency of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, from 1998. In 2018, he headed the Nidaa Tounes list in Tunis for the 2018 Tunisian local elections. Following the said elections, he was elected a member of the Tunis Municipal Council.[4] On 27 February 2019, he was appointed head of the committee preparing the electoral congress of the Tahya Tounes party.[5]
