As the 20th anniversary of the reform of the Mudawana, or family law, approaches – which marked a milestone in Morocco's modernization by, among other things, giving women the right to seek divorce – King Mohamed VI. has been calling on the government for 25 years to submit a draft revision of the law by March 26. Despite bans introduced in 2004, legal exemptions from civil status discriminate against Moroccan women by tolerating residual polygamy, which affects 2% of marriages and marriages involving minors. In addition, women continue to lose the right to guardianship of their minor children when they separate from their husbands, and their hereditary rights over their brothers and even over their uncles and cousins are restricted. Faced with the impending reform of the Mudawana, Moroccan feminist organizations have put together a united front against the veto of conservative and religious sectors unwilling to change norms they consider divinely inspired.
Forums such as the Foundations of Feminism, which took place in Rabat last weekend, have been held in Morocco since Mohammed VI. gave the government of Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Ajanuch six months on September 26 to submit a proposal to reform the family law. The monarch of the Alawite dynasty had already raised the need for a review of the Mudawana in a speech to the nation in July 2022, but the executive preferred to wait until expressed willingness for royal arbitration, given the party's opposition becomes Justice and Development (PJD), the Islamist formation that led the government between 2011 and 2021.
The Association for the Promotion of the Culture of Equality organized the first edition of the conference on feminism with associations, professionals and experts who debated in Rabat the question: “What reform of the Family Code do we want?” The journalist Aicha in charge of the organization Zaimi Sajri, 57 years old, specifies that the forum sought to “serve as a bridge between the generations of the Moroccan feminist movement, the historical group that made its name in the mobilizations of the 1990s.” , which preceded the Mudawana reform of 2004, and the young activists, professionals active in the digital protest campaigns of recent years.
Journalist Aicha Zaimi Sajri, organizer of the “Fundamentals of Feminism in Morocco” conference, on Saturday 16, in Rabat, in a picture provided by the organization.
The Association for the Promotion of the Culture of Equality would like to present the conclusions of the debates on “The Foundations of Feminism” “from a progressive profile”. They will be formulated before a commission made up of the Ministry of Justice and judicial associations, which will collect proposals from parties, NGOs and civil society to present a project to reform the Family Code, emphasizes Sajri, founder of the magazine Femmes de Maroc (Women of Morocco), who gave feminism a voice in the Maghreb country for the first time three decades ago.
The gaps in the 2004 legislation, which feminist associations said was “outdated,” reduced the effectiveness of a reform that set a precedent in Muslim countries. As Amir the Moominin or Commander of the Faithful, Mohammed VI. in his power as a religious leader laid the foundation for law review with this maxim: “I cannot approve what God has forbidden, but neither can I prevent what the Almighty has authorized.” “. Finally, he asked the ulama, or Islamic clerics, to find out what prescriptions about the family are contained in the Koran, which inspires sharia, or religious law, in a country where Islam is the state religion. But it also requires them to erase the gaps in centuries of religious tradition from the legal text. As author and scholar of Islamic theology Asma Lamrabet claims, these are constraints imposed by the jurisprudence of Muslim clerics and have no basis in the Quran. The king emphasized that family law “must adapt to the development of society.”
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Parental guardianship
Nuzha Skali, 73, was one of the oldest participants in the feminist forum in Rabat. She was Minister of Social Development and Family between 2007 and 2011 and deputy of the Party of Progress and Socialism (formerly the Communist Party) in the change of Mudawana in 2004. She is the living memory of Moroccan feminism. “The reforms of the first decade of the reign of Mohammed VI. culminated in the 2011 constitution, which enshrined equality between men and women. But her speech in 2022 came after a decade of stagnation (PJD governments between 2011 and 2021) in which a misogynistic discourse has established itself in Morocco,” defends this historical leader who participated in the creation of the Democratic Women's Association of Morocco . “Society has evolved a lot in 20 years, the marriage age has been pushed back and now men marry on average at 32 and women at 27.”
Current parental guardianship rules can prevent separated women from traveling abroad with their children if they do not have written permission from their ex-husband to present him at the border. “And above all, we must reform the inheritance law, which contradicts the constitution and the international conventions ratified by Morocco,” adds former minister Skali. In the case of male brothers, their daughters only inherit half as much as they do. If there is none, according to the tradition of Taasib (male line of agnation), they are obliged to share their wealth with their uncles or cousins, who can even deprive them of family wealth.
According to Moroccan feminist organizations, the issues of inheritance and joint guardianship and custody appear to have serious potential for reform for the benefit of women. “We present a platform of maxims, knowing full well that we will not achieve all our demands,” admits Sujri, organizer of the forum in Rabat.
Contrary to the dominant discourse in the feminist debate, the Justice and Development Party is openly in favor of underage marriage “for social reasons”. One of its leaders, Mustafa Azami, warns that the party's principles are “based on Islamic law.” The PJD's general secretary, former prime minister Abdelilah Benkiran, has accused the feminist movement of representing only “French-minded women who are disconnected from Morocco's social reality” by calling for a total ban on polygamy and underage marriage. “They live in the clouds and belong to a bourgeois elite in a comfortable economic situation.” At the luxurious Sofitel hotel in Rabat, where the feminist conference took place, hijabs or turbans were barely visible on the heads of participants, among whom French was the lingua franca was.
Current legislation prohibits marriage with minors (up to the age of 18), but allows judges to allow a girl to marry an adult man. In 2022, more than 20,000 marriage applications for minors were registered in Morocco. Two thirds of them (13,652) were accepted by the judges, according to the annual report of the Attorney General's Office.
The 2004 Mudawana also banned polygamy, a practice limited to 2% of Moroccan households unless consent is obtained from the first wife. However, there are men who resort to cohabitation with another woman. When they have a child, they go to court to approve the second marriage to recognize paternity. Divorce is usually the alternative for the opposing spouse.
Lawyer Laila Slassi, head of an NGO that helps women suffering from sexual violence, on Saturday 16 in Rabat, during the “Fundamentals of Feminism in Morocco” conference. JCS
Towards a compromise solution
At the Rabat Feminist Forum, Laila Slassi, a 39-year-old French-trained lawyer and founder of the Massaktach (I Won't Shut Up) collective, which has specialized in defending female victims of sexual violence since 2018, represents a generation of activists, who easily develop in social networks and sometimes also as influencers: “We distribute whistles for women who feel harassed when they walk alone on the streets,” she remembers. “In Morocco, the penalties for sexual assault are high, up to 30 years for minors, but they are not applied in the reality of justice,” asks this lawyer.
Cases like that of an 11-year-old girl who was raped for months by three men in a Moroccan village and threatened with death if she reported her attackers only came to light when her pregnancy revealed her ordeal. In the first trial, the defendants received a paltry prison sentence of just two years. The widespread tip-off prompted a higher court to pardon the culprits and punish them with 10 to 20 years in prison. “She was lucky that feminist activists took up her case,” says Slassi, “but unfortunately these are common verdicts in Moroccan courts.”
“In addition to updating the Family Code, it is time to also reform the Criminal Code,” he warns. Two thirds of the cases of sexual violence that come to court involve minors. “As a result, adult women hardly file any complaints,” complains the lawyer and activist. “If they do so and their lawsuit is filed, they risk being prosecuted for extramarital sexual relations, which can be punishable by up to a year in prison.”
Discrimination against women in Morocco has its origins in a time when only men supported families. Despite the low female employment rate, about a fifth of households are currently supported exclusively by women, and up to a third of families rely on the contribution of female workers to survive. “It is inevitable that the new Family Code will end up being a compromise text,” admits Slassi, “given the fractures in society, in a country with enormous disparities between cities and rural areas, where equality and justice are not guaranteed for everyone .” Women.”
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