Protestants are a religious minority in Algeria. Figures in 2020 suggest that Protestants make up 0.03% of the country's population (or one in 10 Christians).[1]
Missionary groups are permitted to conduct humanitarian activities without government interference as long as they are discreet and do not proselytize openly. Algerian Christians are concentrated in Kabylie.[5]
Since, 2006 proselytizing to Muslims can be punished with up to five years of prison.[6]
Since November 2017, 17 churches, members of the Protestant Church of Algeria, have been closed by the Algerian authorities, who justify these closures by a lack of authorisation from the National Commission for the exercise of non-Muslim worship.[7][8] According to the Protestant Church of Algeria, this Commission has always refused to grant any authorisation to evangelical Protestant communities.[9] The Church of the Full Gospel in Tizi Ouzou, which is described as the largest Algerian Protestant church was closed by police in 2019;[10] in March 2023, a court sentenced the president of the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA), Pastor Salaheddine Chalah, to 18 months in prison for proselytizing on social media, although this was later reduced to non-custodial sentence.
