Overview
- Lawmakers unanimously approved the measure on December 24, celebrating the vote with national flag scarves and chants of “Long live Algeria.”
- The law assigns France legal responsibility for harms under colonial rule and lists nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, torture and systematic plunder as crimes.
- It asserts an inalienable right to full compensation and a formal apology from France, which has offered no apology to date.
- Experts say the legislation carries no binding effect under international law but signals a rupture in the two countries’ contested memory relations.
- The step follows a prolonged diplomatic rift that deepened after France backed Morocco’s Western Sahara autonomy plan in 2024, a stance Algeria opposes while supporting the Polisario Front.