Algiers Charter
ALGIERS CHARTER
The document that redefined the goals of Algeria's FLN after the country gained its independence.
The Algiers Charter is a 176-page document adopted by a congress of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN; National Liberation Front) held in Algiers between 16 April and 21 April 1964. The processes of drafting and adoption were carefully managed by President Ahmed Ben Bella and his followers. The charter's aims were to reshape the FLN, a war-time organization that had led Algeria to independence, into an avant-garde party that would become the motor of social and economic revolution and to sharpen the ideologies and strategies of that revolution.
The charter formalized the organization of the FLN and defined, at least in theory, its relationship to government. Highly populist in tone, it reaf-firmed Algeria's socialist option and laid out plans for agrarian reform and for nationalization of most major sectors of the economy. The Algiers Charter remained until 1976 the official statement of Algeria's political and ideological orientation.
see also ben bella, ahmed; front de libÉration nationale (fln).
Bibliography
Ottaway, David, and Ottaway, Marina. Algeria: The Politics of a Socialist Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
John Ruedy