1954 -

Leader of the radical Workers Party, deputy in the national assembly, and women's and human rights advocate in Algeria.

Born to a poor peasant family, Louisa Hanoune was the first girl in her family to go to school. Overcoming considerable hardship, she earned a law degree at the University of Annaba in 1979. She entered politics by joining the clandestine Socialist Workers Organization (Organisation Socialiste des Travailleurs; OST), a Trotskyist party. Arrested in December 1983 for her political activities, she was released in May 1984 and became the first secretary-general of the Association for Equality before the Law of Men and Women as well as a founding member of the Algerian Human Rights League.

Once a multiparty system was instituted, OST became the Workers Party (PT) with Hanoune serving as its spokesperson. She opposed the army's cancellation of the 1991 elections, and in 1995 signed the Platform of Rome, urging negotiations with the Islamist movement as a way to end the civil war. An outspoken advocate of democracy in Algeria, Hanoune won election to parliament in 1997, one of four PT deputies. In 2002, she led her party to a stronger showing, winning twenty-one seats while continuing her vehement criticism of the Bouteflika government. Her political ideas are spelled out in her book Une autre voix pour l'Algérie (1996). A feminist and social critic, she is the first woman to lead an Algerian political party.

— ROBERT MORTIMER

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.