Algeria’s demand for reparations from France is part of a broader trend. But former colonial powers in Europe don’t want to talk about it.
Reparations once again
Algeria’s parliament on Christmas Eve passed unanimously a law declaring France’s colonisation of the country a crime and demanding reparations and an official apology. President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that French rule from 1830 to 1962 was a crime against humanity but he has refused to issue an apology.
The legislation catalogues some of the crimes of French colonisation in Algeria, including mass killings, the extermination of tribes through suffocation, the burning of villages and “systematic torture and institutionalised sexual violence”. It also lists forced population displacement, land seizures and nuclear and chemical testing in the Sahara.
Eleven of the 17 French nuclear tests in the Sahara were conducted after independence under an agreement that was part of the Evian Accords that saw Algeria gain independence from France. The new law requires France to clean up contaminated sites and reveal where toxic waste is buried, as well as compensating victims, including current generations suffering from related illness.
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France did not immediately respond to the passage of the legislation, which comes as relations between Algiers and Paris are already under strain. Macron last year endorsed Morocco’s claim to the disputed territory of western Sahara, angering Algeria which has long campaigned for its independence.
But Algeria’s action is also part of a broader movement to hold former colonial powers accountable for their legacy in the Global South. The African Union set as its theme for 2025 “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.”
Former colonial powers have been reluctant to enter into any discussion of reparations, suggesting that today’s generation are not responsible for the crimes of previous ones. But as Cristina Duarte, special adviser on Africa to the United Nations secretary general António Guterres noted this year, reparations are not only about righting past wrongs.
“Reparations are often discussed exclusively in terms of the past: slavery, colonial exploitation, violent occupation, and cultural pillage. These were monumental crimes, and the demand for justice for these wrongs is not negotiable,” she wrote.
“However, focusing solely on history without interrogating today’s systemic injustices misses a vital truth: the past wrongs were not buried; they were transformed into today’s economic and political systems.”
One of the most striking legacies of colonialism is the so-called “commodity trap” that traps Africa in a system that sees the permanent extraction of value by richer countries, including the former colonial powers. This means that although Ghana exported almost $10 billion in gold last year, it retained only 14 per cent of its value and while the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) produces more than 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt, only 1 per cent is refined within the country before being exported.
“The 21st century demands a bold redefinition of what reparations truly mean. Reparations must not be seen merely as financial compensation for past events. They must be understood as a call to transform the very rules of the game – the international trade, finance, and governance systems that have perpetuated injustice for centuries,” Duarte wrote.
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