Algeria - Solidar

eservations or declarations expressed’. 8
These failures, coupled with the lack
of training of judges and lawyers with
respect to international human rights law,
are responsible for their lack of knowledge
of the provisions of the conventions and
cast doubt on the stated precedence of
the latter over domestic law.
Moreover, the legislative advances
mentioned above were offset by the
ambiguous language of some provisions
and by the failure to apply them in practice.
Although Law 90-31 initiated a declarative
system for the registration of associations,
it gave the state the authority to take
legal means (by launching proceedings
in the appropriate regional administrative
tribunal) to deny legal status to an
association if its goals were deemed to be
contrary to the ‘established institutional
system’, ‘law and order’ or ‘public morality’
– concepts that are very vague and open
the door to a broad area of discretionary
interpretation by the authorities.
Article 45 of Law 90-31 also provides that
anyone who leads, administers or plays
an active role in an association that has
been denied registration, suspended
or dissolved will be subject to either a
sentence of imprisonment of between
three months and two years or a fine of
between 50,000 and 100,000 Algerian
dinars, or to both sanctions. This article of
the law is based on the notion of ‘approval’
of an association, which is contrary to the
principle of the declarative system and
thus creates confusion around the nature
of the acknowledgment, which is now seen
as a decision authorising an association
to begin its activities rather than a simple
document acknowledging the receipt
of its registration papers. 9 At the same
time, as we shall see in the second part
of this report, the authorities have used
the non‐delivery of the acknowledgment
as a tactic to prevent some NGOs from
pursuing their activities.
In addition, the law requires associations
to provide the names of a large number of
founding members as well as documentary
evidence not only on these individuals but
also on the association itself, whereas in
most other countries the names of only
two founding members are needed and
the number of required documents is
much smaller. Moreover, the law requires
an association to obtain prior approval
from the Interior Ministry before it can
receive funding assistance from outside
sources.
With respect to freedom of opinion,
expression and information, Law 90-07 on
the organisation of information benefited
the printed media exclusively, even
though there were no legal impediments
excluding other media such as television
and radio, which would be major resources
for civil-society actors wishing to reach a
broad audience.
And finally, as we shall see presently, the
gains recorded in the early 1990s were
soon lost during the ‘black decade’ of the
civil war and the long years of the state
of emergency, which were marked by
egregious human rights violations.
8 Madjid Benchikh and Amine Sidhoum, Algeria: The Independence
and Impartiality of the Judiciary. Copenhagen: Euro-Mediterranean
Human Rights Network, October 2011, p. 12.
9 See the EMHRN’s annual reports on freedom of association in the
Euro-Mediterranean region for 2009 and 2010.
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EMHRN - The Exercise of the Freedoms of Association, Assembly and Demonstration in Algeria - 2011