Tripoli Programme (1962)

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TRIPOLI PROGRAMME (1962)

Document representing the first comprehensive endeavor to define an identity and direction for independent Algeria.

At the end of the Algerian War of Independence, the Tripoli Programme, one of the most important documents in modern Algerian history, was introduced, the product of the meeting in Libya of Algeria's Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front, FLN). This occasion in June 1962 marked the last time the wartime FLN convened before the intraelite conflict of that summer, which established the new government under Ahmed Ben Bella.

The program proposed a "socialist option" for Algeria's development. According to its chief authors, Redha Malek, Mohamed Bedjaoui, and Mohamed Benyahia, the quest for democracy necessitated class conflict and economic transformation. It projected the nationalization of foreign interests, the establishment of an industrial economy, and the inauguration of agricultural cooperatives. Stridently anticolonial, the program viewed the recently signed Evian agreements with France as neocolonialist. The Tripoli Programme was complemented in April 1964 by the Algiers Charter and by Algeria's National Charter (1976; 1986).

see also algiers charter.

phillip c. naylor