Algeria: moving to criminalize French colonialism with a national law

This text, scheduled to be debated in plenary session on 20, 21 and 24 December 2025, seeks to legally qualify the crimes committed during the colonial period (1830-1962) as crimes against humanity.

The bill includes a series of provisions detailed in 54 articles covering around thirty categories of crimes attributed to the French authorities of the time.

These notably target arbitrary executions, torture, sexual violence, land confiscation, the plundering of the public treasury and even nuclear tests in the Sahara. The text proposes that these acts be declared not subject to statutes of limitation, which would prevent any challenge to their seriousness over time.

Another component of the bill provides that the Algerian State refrain from concluding bilateral agreements with France as long as the official recognition of these crimes is not guaranteed.

If adopted, this text would make Algeria one of the few countries in the world to enshrine the criminalization of colonialism in its domestic law, marking a major symbolic and legal step in the recognition of its colonial past.

According to parliamentary sources, the proposal was revised in committee and is now on the National Assembly’s agenda for an in-depth debate before a final vote.

The initiative is part of a broader context of historical and legal claims pursued by Algeria and several African countries, which believe that colonial crimes require not only recognition but also an explicit legal response in national or international legislation.

The adoption of this law will depend on the course of parliamentary debates and the final approval of national authorities, but it already represents a turning point in how Algeria intends to institutionalize the memory of its colonial past and assert its historical sovereignty.