The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures. It also alters the procedure for filling vacancies in the Senate, allowing for state legislatures to permit their governors to make temporary appointments until a special election can be held.
The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or the Algerian Revolution was fought between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, and the use of torture. The conflict also became a civil war between the different communities and within the communities. The war took place mainly on the territory of Algeria, with repercussions in metropolitan France.
The Fifth Republic, France's current republican system of government, was established by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the Fourth Republic, replacing the former parliamentary republic with a semi-presidential, or dual-executive, system that split powers between a Prime Minister as head of government and a President as head of state. De Gaulle, who was the first French President elected under the Fifth Republic in December 1958, believed in a strong head of state, which he described as embodying l'esprit de la nation.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, GColIH is an Algerian politician who has been the fifth President of Algeria since 1999. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1963 to 1979. As President, he presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002, and he ended emergency rule in February 2011 amidst regional unrest. He was the president of the United Nations General Assembly for a term in 1974.
Algeria is divided into 48 wilayas (provinces) and 1541 baladiyahs. The capital city of a baladiyah, daïra, or province always gives those entities their name, even Algiers, the capital of the country gave it its name.
Algeria elects on national level a head of state - the president - and a legislature. The president is elected for a five-year term by the people. People's National Assembly has 462 members, elected for a five-year term in multi-seat constituencies by proportional representation. Eight seats in the national assembly are reserved for Algerians abroad. The Council of the Nation has 144 members, 96 members elected by communal councils and 48 members appointed by the president. Algeriawesh alors has a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which no one party often has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments. According to a US Embassy cable, the 2009 presidential elections were "carefully choreographed and heavily controlled", with the official turnout figure "exaggerated" by at least 45%.
The Algeria national football team represents Algeria in association football and is controlled by the Algerian Football Federation. The team plays its home games at the Stade 5 Juillet 1962 in Algiers.
Freedom of religion in Algeria is regulated by the Algerian Constitution, which declares Islam to be the state religion but also declares that "freedom of creed and opinion is inviolable" ; it prohibits discrimination, Article 29 states "All citizens are equal before the law. No discrimination shall prevail because of birth, race, sex, opinion or any other personal or social condition or circumstance". In practice, the government generally respects this, with some limited exceptions. The government follows a de facto policy of tolerance by allowing, in limited instances, the conduct of religious services by non-Muslim faiths in the capital which are open to the public. The small Christian and tiny Jewish populations generally practice their faiths without government interference. The law does not recognize marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men; it does however recognise marriages between Muslim men and non-Muslim women. By law, children follow the religion of their fathers, even if they are born abroad and are citizens of their (non-Muslim) country of birth.
Sonatrach (Arabic:سوناطراك) is an Algerian government-owned company formed to explore the hydrocarbon resources of the country. It has some concessions in Libya, Mauritania, Peru, Yemen and Venezuela. Its diversified activities cover all aspects of production: exploration, extraction, transport, and refining. It has diversified into petrochemistry and the desalination of seawater.
An Algerian Constitution was first adopted by a referendum in 1963, following the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62); originally, it was to be drafted by a constitutional assembly led by Ferhat Abbas, but this body was sidelined by Algeria's first President, Ahmed Ben Bella. In its 1963 form, the constitution declared Algeria a one-party state ruled by the former resistance movement, the National Liberation Front (FLN). This constitution was suspended by the military coup d'état of 1965. After years of ruling by executive fiat as leader of the Revolutionary Council, Houari Boumédienne issued a second constitution in 1976, emphasizing the importance of socialism and - formally - restoring political institutions to their primacy over the military establishment.
The President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is the head of state of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a government in exile based in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf, Algeria.
Entente Sportive Sètifienne, known as Entente de Sétif, commonly referred to as ES Sétif or ESS for short, is an Algerian professional football club based in Sétif. The club was founded in 1958 and its colours are black and white. Their home stadium, the Stade 8 Mai 1945, has a capacity of 18,000 spectators. The club is currently playing in the Algerian Ligue Professionnelle 1.
The provinces of Algeria are divided into 547 districts (daïras). The capital of a district is called a district seat. Each District is further divided into one or more municipalities (baladiyahs).
During the 1962 Algerian War of Independence, Algerian women fought as equals alongside men. They thus achieved a new sense of their own identity and a measure of acceptance from men. In the aftermath of the war, women maintained their new-found emancipation and became more involved in the development of the new state. Among the countries of the region, Algeria is regarded as a relatively liberal nation and the status of women reflects this. However, while the constitution guarantees equality between genders, family law discriminates against women. Women can vote and run for political positions.
Polygamous marriages may be legally contracted in Algeria in the form of polygyny, and a man may take up to four wives. However, recent amendments to the Algerian Family Code have made it increasingly more difficult to contract such a marriage and reports of polygamous marriages occurring have been notably rare. Neighboring Tunisia outlaws polygamy altogether.
A constitutional referendum was held in Algeria on 23 February 1989. Coming after the 1988 October Riots, the new constitution removed references to socialism and allowed for multi-party democracy. Despite calls for a boycott by radical Islamists and opposition from trade unions and FLN members, the amendments were approved by 73.4% of voters with a 79% turnout. Local elections were scheduled for the following year, with parliamentary elections to be held in 1991.
A constitutional referendum was held in Algeria on 26 November 1996. Held amidst the Algerian Civil War, the amendments would prohibit the use of Islam and ethnic identity in domestic politics. Despite calls for a boycott, the amendments were approved by 85.8% of voters with a 79.8% turnout. Parliamentary elections were held the following year.
The 2010–12 Algerian protests was a series of protests taking place throughout Algeria, lasting from 28 December 2010 to early 2012. The protests had been inspired by similar protests across the Middle East and North Africa. Causes cited by the protesters included unemployment, the lack of housing, food-price inflation, corruption, restrictions on freedom of speech and poor living conditions. While localized protests were already commonplace over previous years, extending into December 2010, an unprecedented wave of simultaneous protests and riots, sparked by sudden rises in staple food prices, erupted all over the country starting in January 2011. These were quelled by government measures to lower food prices, but were followed by a wave of self-immolations, most of them in front of government buildings. Opposition parties, unions, and human rights organisations then began to hold weekly demonstrations, despite these being illegal without government permission under the ongoing state of emergency; the government suppressed these demonstrations as far as possible, but in late February yielded to pressure and lifted the state of emergency. Meanwhile, protests by unemployed youth, typically citing unemployment, hogra (oppression), and infrastructure problems, resumed, occurring almost daily in towns scattered all over the country.
