The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said it is mounting an emergency operation to assist around 50,000 refugees in Algeria, after their homes and shelters in three refugee camps were washed away by torrential rains. In a statement from Algeria, UNHCR said it was planning an airlift of around 12,000 tents, 7,000 kitchen sets, 60,000 blankets and other living essentials to the camps, which house Sahrawi refugees who fled Western Sahara in 1975.

The General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) has launched a nationwide campaign to organise women, the priority target group being women in the textile sector. Alongside this organising drive, the UGTA is also leading a campaign against sexual harassment and a campaign for the revision of Algeria's family code, as executive member Souad Charid explains.

After a decade of civil war between government forces and islamist extremist groups, violence in Algeria has decreased significantly over the past few years. Between 1992 and 2002, fighting and attacks targeting the civil population forced large numbers of Algerians to flee rural areas and find security in nearby urban centres. The actual number of people displaced during the civil war is difficult to assess given the information void that has pervaded the conflict in Algeria since its onset.

Algerian authorities have debarred a delegation of the International Union for Human Rights Associations from visiting the country by sending it back from the Algiers International Airport. The joint delegation from the IUHRA, the European-Mediterranean Network for Human Rights, and the Cairo-based Human Rights Research Institute was denied access to visit Algeria.