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Public Holidays and Bank Holidays for Bénin

The list of Bénin bank holidays, national holidays and public holidays for 2009, comes from the Q++ Worldwide Public Holidays Database, the professional source of international public holidays long trusted by the world's foremost diary publishers. The information on this page is provided for private, non-professional, use. Qualified professionals can license data for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and beyond. For details, please visit our licensing information page or

 © 1989-2009 Alter Ego Services

10 Jun 2009 (Afrique en Ligne-Cotonou) At an extraordinary council of ministers meeting, yesterday, Benin's government declared three days of national mourning, starting from today, June 10, in memory of President Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, who passed away Monday. • 16 May 2008 (Panafrican News Agency-PANA) The government of Benin has declared Thursday, May 22, 2008, as a one-off public holiday to allow Beninese citizens to pay their last tribute to Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, who died Tuesday in Paris at the age of 86. • 01 Dec 2006 Next parliamentary elections - March 25, 2007. • 05 Jan 1998 (The Economist) Benin will celebrate its traditional Vodoun religion festival as an official gazetted public holiday, on January 10, 1998, after a motion to remove the festival from the list of Benin's public holidays was rejected by Parliament late last year. • More News Updates For the full version of the summarized news items above, and older news items not displayed above, go to the Bénin public holidays news and updates page, or worldwide public holidays news and updates page, or subscribe to one of our free email newsletters.

Governing Law: Official public holidays in the Bénin are regulated by the "Ordonnance no 79-33 du 2 juillet 1979 fixant les fêtes légales en République populaire du Bénin". • Vaudoun Day is also called Voodoo Day or Traditional Religions Day. Although 65 percent of Benin's population believes in voodoo, the practice has historically been the target of discrimination and was even, at one point, subject to a government imposed ban. But, now, the festival has been a national holiday for a decade and in 2006 delegations from neighboring Togo and Ghana were represented, as well as tourists from as far away as the United States. The festival has now gone global. • The public holidays of January 16 and October 26 were abandonned in 1990, although one still finds them listed on some web sites. • Bénin International Codes BJ and BEN (2 and 3-letter ISO3166 codes) and .bj (ICANN national top-level internet domain). • Other Sources of Information The following specialized websites are also a good source of Bénin information and news: Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) (Bénin central bank), ASI Hot Spots (security-related world events: terrorist threats, political strife, strikes, criminal activity, aviation incidents and health outbreaks), CIA World Factbook (Bénin maps, demographics and economic statistics), the IFES (information covering upcoming elections, referenda, electoral structures and voter participation in Bénin), and Wikipedia (includes Bénin commemorative dates that are not necessarily public holidays).

Observance : Any entry in the Observance column indicates that, in Bénin, the holiday may be regional or non-official or limited to certain religious and/or linguistic groups, or begin at a time other than midnight. Note that religious holidays are included only if they are national public holidays, or if the national labour code has specific holiday allowances for employees of specific religions. For more information, see our pages on the religious calendars of the world.

Religious Holidays : Public holidays in Bénin that are based on certain religious calendars may be subject to local variations due to differing interpretations between different religious authorities, or to seemingly arbitrary changes in the date a holiday is celebrated because it conflicts with another holiday that is based on another calendar, or because the day of the holiday is deemed inauspicious (bad luck). To find out more about these uncertainties, see the footnote below, if any, for each specific religion.

Muslim Holidays : Muslim bank holidays, legal holidays and public holidays for Bénin were evaluated using the Umm al-Qura Calendar of Saudi Arabia which is used in Saudi Arabia and in most of the Persian Gulf States. Holidays may occur a day later in countries outside the Gulf region. The sunrises, sunsets, moon phases, moonrises and moonsets used in these calculations are based on the location of Mecca (latitude 21.42°N, longitude, 39.82°E, GMT+3 hours, no summer time rules). For more details on Muslim holidays, see Muslim Calendar Holidays. For Salat (prayer times) calculations, see our Freeware page.

Disclaimer
In many parts of the world, holidays are subject to arbitrary, last minute, changes by local authorities. While every effort has been made to present an accurate list of 2009 bank holidays, legal holidays and public holidays for Bénin, we cannot accept any responsibility for any error or omission in the data presented above. You are therefore advised to verify the above dates with the embassy or consulate of Bénin, before planning any trip to Bénin. For last-minute updates to worldwide public holidays, visit our blog or subscribe to our free email newsletters.