(ANSAmed) – RABAT – King Mohammed VI of Morocco is making an early move on libertarian movements on the back of the “Arab Spring”, and has made a historic speech announcing the need for constitutional reform. Women’s rights organisations have immediately spoken out as part of a coalition known as the “feminist spring for equality and democracy” and are hastily preparing a memorandum to be submitted to the commission tasked with drafting the new constitutional text. One urgent demand is the need to insert into the Constitution the equality between men and women, and there are calls for international conventions to supersede national regulations on the matter.
The women’s battle has ended in victory, with the text approved by the population in the referendum of June 30 advocating “equal opportunities and respect of human dignity” as well as the “pre-eminence of international conventions compared to the country’s internal law”.
Article 19 is even more explicit, sanctioning full equality of rights and individual freedom between men and women. The process of equality in Morocco has come on leaps and bounds over the last decade, at least in legal terms. The first major break with conservatism and Arab and Muslim tradition came in 2004 with the advent of the new family code. The text approved the abolition of the notion of “attaâ” (obedience), the right of women to demand divorce, to marry without need for an agreement from a guardian, and rigid measures on polygamy and underage marriage. Another important step came in 2007, with the introduction of the right to Moroccan nationality for children born to a Moroccan mother and foreign father.
Feminist circles in Morocco are aware of the legal steps forward taken over the last few years, but also that these have not produced any great results in practical terms. The first major disappointment will come with the creation of the new government led by the moderate Islamist, Abdelilah Benkirane, in which female representation, in the first government of the era of the new constitution, will be insignificant. “It is an act of contempt towards women and towards the whole of Morocco. The government cannot be allowed to ridicule women’s rights and violate the measures featuring in the Constitution,” women said in Rabat on February 20, after travelling from around the country to demonstrate outside the country’s Parliament, responding to calls for a “network of women’s solidarity” and a “Democratic League of Women’s Rights” (LDDF).
The main challenge remains to overcome the clash between a party approved on paper and the mentality of a conservative society. The target of equality between the sexes remains a long way off, due to difficulties linked mainly to education rights, female unemployment (which is structurally higher than the male rate), and the weakness of women in the world of work, where they are most exposed to precarious and poorly paid positions. Reforms, therefore, are lacking real implementation. The problem, according to Fatima Zohara, a lawyer and the president of the Moroccan association for the fight against violence, lies in the mentality of judges, which “remains patriarchal”. Legal circles, she says, have not yet picked up on the philosophy and the spirit of the new family code and are therefore incapable of implementing it fully. Regarding the removal of reservations on the international convention against all forms of discrimination against women, “hereditary division should be considered, as should the right of a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim”. It is difficult to imagine that such an idea could be accepted, especially by a government led by Islamists. (ANSAmed).
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