Algeria: Anti-colonisation summit ends with ‘Algiers declaration’

Algeria hosted a 2-day international conference, which opened on 30th November, exploring crimes committed during the colonisation of Africa, reports state-friendly TSA Algerie.

The summit, organised at the request of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, focused on crimes committed by European powers in Africa and the possibility of reparations. It brought together historians, legal experts and politicians from 29 countries to discuss their colonial heritage and its legacy.

Algeria’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf highlighted the fact that there has not been an official acknowledgement of colonial crimes, and called for legal recognition and criminalisation of colonisation. He also talked at length about the massacres committed by the French authorities during their 132-year-long colonisation of Algeria, describing them as “a model without equal in history”.

Fortune Zephania Charumbira, President of the Pan-African Parliament and a Zimbabwean politician, noted the need for Africa to speak with one voice and to maintain a detailed record of those crimes. He added, “Each country must present, through the African Union, the crimes it has suffered “.

Tunisian Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Nafti adopted a more pragmatic position, asking for better representation of African countries in international institutions or for a reevaluation of African states’ debt.

The conference ended with the ‘Algiers declaration’, adopted by the participants, which recognises the conference as a “major political step” towards justice and historical recognition, according to reports by L’Algérie Aujourd’hui.

The document further confirmed their engagement to protect Africa’s sovereignty over its natural and economic resources, and to fight against interference and external pressure.

Decades after they won their independence, African countries are working together to create a legal framework through which perpetrators of colonial crimes could be prosecuted, and reparations paid. Algeria, once seen as a refuge for revolutionaries such as Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat, is now paving the way for the recognition of Africa’s colonial past, legally and morally, both on a national and regional level.

TSA Algerie, L’Algérie Aujourd’hui, Maghrebi