Repatriation: Bringing the Settler Colony “Home”

Abstract

Between June 1960 and February 1961, as tensions mounted in Algeria, a group of magistrates, professors of law, syndicate and union leaders, and elected officials in the Metropole came together to form the “Association for the Safeguard of Judicial Institutions and the Defense of Individual Liberties.” The Association convened four times with the goal of drafting a text for the government’s cease-fire talks with the FLN, which were planned for February 1961 at Evian, near the border with Switzerland.¹ Among the key agenda for the Association was the future of the Europeans if Algeria should achieve autonomy. The Association members agreed that the Europeans would become a “minority population” in Algeria with special rights. The terms of these rights and Algeria’s obligation to uphold them were drawn from the 1948 U.N. Charter on the Declaration of Human Rights. The text drafted by the Association declared that it would be Algeria’s duty to ensure that the Europeans would have “the right to nationality,” the “right to partake in the government of his country,” and “the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community”, the very rights stated in Article 27 of the U.N. Charter.²