Louisa Hanoune
| Louisa Hanoune | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
7 April 1954 Chekfa, Algeria |
| Political party | Workers' Party |
| Alma mater | University of Annaba |
| Website | Party website |
Louisa Hanoune (Arabic: لويزة حنون) (born 7 April 1954) is the head of Algeria's Workers' Party (Parti des Travailleurs, PT). In 2004, she became the first woman to run for President of Algeria. Hanoune was imprisoned by the government several times prior to the legalization of political parties in 1988. She was jailed soon after she joined the Trotskyist Social Workers Organisation, an illegal party, in 1981 and again after the 1988 October Riots, which brought about the end of the National Liberation Front's (FLN) single-party rule. During Algeria's civil war of the 1990s, Hanoune was one of the few opposition voices in parliament, and, despite her party's laicist values, a strong opponent of the government's "eradication" policy toward Islamists. In January 1995, she signed the Sant'Egidio Platform together with representatives of other opposition parties, notably the Islamic Salvation Front, the radical Islamist party whose dissolution by military decree brought about the start of the civil war.
Hanoune was born in Chekfa, Jijel Province. Her parents were mountain peasants from Chekfa, Jijel Province, and she fled with her family to the city of Annaba, after her parental home was bombed by the French army during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). She was the first woman of her family to go to school. With Algeria's free and compulsory education system, Hanoune completed secondary school and went on to obtain her Bachelor's Degree before joining the air transport sector. Hanoune studied law at the University of Annaba, a decision which was opposed by her father. She has stated that “It is this right to education which will completely change the position, the representation of women in our society and of which I am partly a product."
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