Constitution of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, 2020, Article 47 (Privacy of correspondence and communications, and protection of personal data)

Article 47 of Algeria's Constitution, in the version adopted by referendum on 1 November 2020 and promulgated on 30 December 2020, is the principal constitutional anchor for digital privacy and data protection in Algeria. It guarantees every person the protection of their private life and honour, and declares the secrecy of correspondence and private communications, 'in all their forms', to be guaranteed and inviolable, subject to encroachment only by a reasoned judicial order. Crucially for the digital-rights field, Article 47 elevates the protection of natural persons in the processing of personal data to a constitutional, fundamental right guaranteed by law. This express constitutionalisation of personal-data protection, going beyond mere protection of correspondence, is what brings the provision within the inclusion bar for a dedicated Digital Rights entry: it is digital-specific language directly underpinning Algeria's statutory data-protection regime (Law No. 18-07 of 2018, as amended by Law No. 25-11 of 2025) and providing the constitutional basis for the national data-protection authority (ANPDP). The provision sits alongside the 2020 Constitution's guarantees of freedom of expression and of the press. In practice, the constitutional guarantee of communications secrecy stands in tension with the surveillance and content-blocking architecture of Algeria's cybercrime statute (Law No. 09-04 of 2009), which authorises electronic monitoring and obliges providers to block content and retain traffic data; the constitutional protection is therefore best understood as a high-level guarantee whose practical force depends on judicial enforcement that civil-society observers regard as limited. This entry records the constitutional layer of Algeria's digital-rights framework; the operative restrictions and surveillance powers are documented in the linked cybercrime instrument. Original language: Arabic (official) / French.

1. 1Article 47 guarantees protection of private life and honour, and the inviolable secrecy of correspondence and private communications 'in all their forms'
2. 2Constitutionalises the protection of personal data in processing as a fundamental right guaranteed by law, the basis for Law 18-07 and the ANPDP
3. 3Permits interference with communications secrecy only by reasoned judicial order
4. 4Read with the 2020 Constitution's guarantees of freedom of expression and of the press
5. 5Inclusion-bar basis: explicit data-protection (digital-specific) language, not a generic privacy clause
6. 6Stands in tension with surveillance and content-blocking powers under cybercrime Law 09-04