Four years after the start of the Hirak protest movement in Algeria, human rights organizations held a press conference in Paris on February 21, 2023 to express their concerns about the situation in the country. Patrick Baudouin, lawyer and honorary president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and president of the League for Human Rights (LDH), believes that the recent dissolution of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH) and the various waves of arrests of activists have led to a “terribly degraded and very worrying” situation.
Baudouin urged the international community to confront this repression in Algeria, stressing that “following the popular Hirak movement in 2019, immense hope had been raised to see Algeria evolve towards a democracy”. He called on the civil societies, human rights movements and the international community to use the maximum means of pressure on the Algerian authorities to end the relentless suppression of all essential freedoms of expression and the confiscation of the power and economic interests of the country in the hands of a few.