The Nada network, domiciled in Algiers, received 18,000 calls related to child abuse situations. The ONPPE listening cell processed more than 1,600 reports until September 30. "Children in Algeria are confronted with multiple problems, including poverty, drug addiction, health problems, violence and abuse, undeclared work, and even attempts at illegal immigration", notes the sociology professor, Layachi Anser.

Child abuse cases have increased worryingly, especially during the lockdown imposed by Covid-19.

There have been reports of assault, kidnapping and murder in recent days, sparking public opinion dismayed at the scale of violence against this fragile category of society.

In Tamanrasset, the lifeless and burnt body of a teenage girl was found by elements of the Civil Protection and the national gendarmerie in the district of Tahaggart. In Tlemcen, a girl was kidnapped. His captors demanded a ransom of 200 million centimes from his father.

The case would be a settling of scores. In Boumerdes, a girl, barely out of her teenage years, is raped and her body burned in an abandoned gas station. Cases of disappearance and running away of children are also reported in Oran, Saïda and Algiers ...

The teenagers were found safe and sound by the security services. But sometimes the end is much more tragic: in Tamanrasset, a 12-year-old boy, who has been missing for four days, was later found dead in an abandoned building in the Ankov district, on the outskirts of the capital of the wilaya.

The confinement caused by the health situation has not helped: the Algerian Network for the Defense of the Rights of the Child (Nada), based in Algiers, has noted a significant increase in cases of violence against children.

“We meet in our Network all forms of abuse against children. Containment due to the health crisis of recent months has complicated matters. The cases reported to us have increased.

Children, who did not go to school and did not leave their homes to play with their peers, had no more means of distraction. All this promiscuity breeds violence. Children often bear the brunt of deplorable situations.

The mother takes revenge on her child for the violence she suffers from her spouse. Divorce makes the daily life of children even more difficult. There have even been murders, ”warns Hamida Khayrat, SG of the Nada Network. For Me Ghoulamallah, lawyer with the Nada network, the health situation has put "under pressure on families, especially children".