CONSTITUTION Of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria 1989 (amended by the constitutional revision of 1996) PREAMBLE The Algerian people are a free people, and decided to remain so. Its history is a long series of struggles which always made Algeria a land of freedom and dignity. Being at the heart of great events witnessed by the Mediterranean area throughout history, Algeria has found in her sons, since the Numid era and the islamic epic and up to the wars of decolonization, the pioneers of freedom, unity and progress as well as builders of democratic and prosperous States during the periods of glory and peace. The 1st of November 1954 was a turning point for its destiny and a crowning for the long resistance to agressions carried out against its culture, its values and the fundamental components of its identity which are Islam, Arabity and Amazighity. Its current struggles are well rooted in the glorious past of the nation. Gathered in the national movement and later within the National Front of Liberation, the Algerian people have made great sacrifices in order to assume their collective destiny in the framework of recovered freedom and cultural identity and to build authentic people’s democratic constitutional institutions. The National Front of Liberation crowned the sacrifices of the best sons of Algeria during the people’s war of liberation with independence and built a modern and full sovereign State. The belief in the collective choices allowed the people to achieve great successes, characterised by the recovery of the national ressources and the building of a State exclusively for the benefit of the people and exercising freely its powers and without any external pressures. Having fought and still fighting for freedom and democracy, the Algerian people, by this Constitution, decided to build constitutional institutions based on the participation of any Algerian, man and woman, in the management of public affairs; and on the ability to achieve social justice, equality and freedom for all. The constitution is the concretization of the people’s genuis, the reflection of their aspirations, the fruit of their determination and the product of the deep social changes.