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Algeria
Youth and Student Unions
The FLN formed the National Union of Algerian Students (Union
Nationale des Étudiants Algériens--UNEA), but party directives
had less impact on the UNEA than on other FLN-influenced bodies
such as the UGTA. The student union was quite active throughout
the 1960s despite government attempts to quell the movement. Strikes,
boycotts, and other violent clashes between student groups and
government officials continued to upset numerous university campuses
until the union was suppressed and dissolved in 1971. The student
movement was subsequently absorbed into the more docile National
Union of Algerian Youth (Union Nationale de la Jeunesse Algérienne--UNJA),
a national conglomerate of youth organizations controlled by the
FLN. The UNJA was the only youth group to be recognized officially
in the list of national associations enumerated in the National
Charter of 1976.
Despite a brief surge of student demonstrations in the late 1970s,
the UNJA leadership has increasingly met with apathy and a lack
of interest on the part of both high school and university students--in
part because of the existence of a number of local organizations
that parallel UNJA activities. Most of the UNJA's roster in 1993
did not consist of students.
As has been true for most other elements of civil society, FLN
has dominance translated into a greater emphasis on party propaganda
and mobilization than on the association's own objectives. Implementing
these objectives a posed challenge to the student union leadership.
Union leaders face a disillusioned constituency--students who
upon completing years of education cannot find jobs, masses of
impoverished and unemployed youth with little confidence in distant
authorities, and youth without nostalgia for the War of Independence
they are too young to remember. When the population exploded onto
the streets in October 1988, it was the students who were the
first to organize and who made up the bulk of demonstrators in
the six days of rioting.
Data as of December 1993
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