Réconciliation nationale et compensation en Algérie et au Maroc

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, Algeria and Morocco have put in place policies of “reconciliation”. Algeria, after its policy of clemency (1995) and civil concord (1999), implemented, following a referendum (2005), the measures of the charter for peace and national reconciliation; the ultimate policy, to date, to settle the accounts of a murderous decade (1990s) opposing the state and armed Islamic groups. In Morocco, an arbitration committee (1999) and then the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (2004) were set up to turn the page on the period of the “years of lead” (reign of Hassan II) during which state crimes were committed (torture, imprisonment, assassinations, etc.). At the heart of these reconciliation mechanisms, we find one practice: (monetary) compensation for the crimes committed. This has been very little studied. In this article, I explain why, being interested in national reconciliation policies in Algeria and Morocco, I have come to devote my analysis to the compensatory act. The idea that I develop is that compensation remains a central practice of reconciliation mechanisms in North Africa, particularly for normative, social and cultural reasons, but it no longer appears to be sufficient, in itself, because the vision of the person, suffering and trauma has profoundly changed. Compensation alone fails to integrate the expectations of reparations, as they are increasingly promoted here and elsewhere; i.e., more focused on the “condition of the victim” (Rechtman, 2011).

Keywords

• Morocco
• Algeria
• reconciliation
• compensation
• reparation
• victims.