ALGERIA

Algeria's "hittistes" — young men who spend their days leaning against walls, watching life pass by — are the country's most visible symbol of male crisis. The term, derived from the Arabic word for "wall," describes men who have given up on finding work, starting families, or participating in a system they perceive as corrupt and rigged. These men aren't lazy — they're the rational response to an economy that produces oil wealth for the elite and nothing for the rest. The Hirak protest movement of 2019-2020 gave these men a momentary purpose, filling the streets with millions demanding change, before COVID and government repression pushed them back to the walls.

The décennie noire (1991-2002) created a generation of men with untreated PTSD on a scale that rivals post-war societies. During the civil war between the government and Islamist militants, men in villages like Bentalha and Raïs witnessed massacres of neighbors and family members. The government's reconciliation law offered amnesty without accountability, meaning men live alongside former perpetrators with no justice and no psychological support. The result is a society where male violence — domestic, interpersonal, and political — is elevated because an entire generation's trauma was officially declared resolved without ever being addressed.