On 22 February 2019, after a number of protest marches in smaller cities throughout the previous week, from the morning on and increasingly after Friday prayers, hundreds of thousands of Algerians took to the streets of Algiers. On 16 February, a large protest had been organised in Kherrata in the east of Algeria. Progressively, in every city of the country, others joined them until millions of Algerians were marching to protest against the decision of ailing president Bouteflika to stand, yet again, for a fifth mandate in the upcoming presidential election. Bouteflika’s decision to stand would have violated the Algerian Constitution on two fronts. First, the constitution was revised only in 2016 to limit presidential mandates to two. Second, in the case of incapacity, article 102 of the constitution requires the president to hand over power to the head of senate for 90 days. Bouteflika was clearly incapacitated, not having spoken in public since suffering a stroke in 2013. After years of low-level unrest, ongoing strikes and deep dissatisfaction with corruption and the poor state of governance, February 2019 saw the wall of fear against protesting fall.1

The rise of fundamentalism and terrorism, and the violent acts committed against women, during the Algerian conflict of the 1990s (the ‘Black Decade’, also referred to as the Algerian ‘Dark Decade’) undoubtedly had a catalytic effect on the mass feminization of Algerian migration. However, they arguably served to amplify an existing migratory movement of women. This article argues that, during times of war or internal conflict, violence and a climate of fear may be the main reason why women flee, but it is not the only one. Women’s forced migration is complex and is often related to specific, gender-based oppression, which is exacerbated by conflict. This research, conducted amongst highly skilled women who left Algeria during and after the Black Decade, reveals that their decisions to leave were also greatly influenced by their position as women: the violence specifically targeted at educated or high-profile women, women’s legal situation and the oppression they experienced in family and society. Yet, despite the UNHCR’s gender guidelines, the complex experiences of women fleeing gender-based violence often remain unacknowledged by national asylum regimes.