#faces near udaya castle in rabat, morocco (26 march). Xinhua news agency journalist huo jing
On 24 december, morocco proposed a reform of the family code (moudawana) to improve women's rights in the country. The reforms mainly concerned issues of underage marriage, custody of women's children and inheritance rights for women. This was the first time in 20 years that the country had reviewed its family code。
The minister of justice of morocco, abdelatif ouahbi, informed reuters journalists that the draft code introduced more than 100 amendments, mainly addressing polygamy, female child custody, restrictions on child marriage and female inheritance rights。
Polygamy would still be permitted, but in order to give women more control over marriage, the reform had introduced stricter rules, in particular allowing women to make provision in their marriage contracts against polygamy. In the absence of such an objection, the husband may take a second wife in certain circumstances, such as the infertility of the first wife。
Morocco had previously granted custody only to fathers, and the new bill would be shared by both parents, equally applicable in the case of separation, and provided that if divorced mothers remarryed, they would no longer lose custody of their children。
Moroccan women's rights advocates had called for a complete ban on child marriage, but the new proposal did not appear to have met that goal. The new legislation proposes to raise the legal age of marriage to 18 years and to raise the minimum age for exceptions (such as unmarried pregnancy) from 15 to 17 years。
Under the current law, which is based on islamic rules of inheritance, the property inherited by a female heir is half that of a male heir, the reform provides another option by recommending that individuals be allowed to give any of their assets to their female heirs (including minors)。
The supreme council of ulema, which is responsible for ensuring that moroccan law is consistent with the principles of sharia law, states that these amendments reflect a shift to a modern legal framework and are adapted to current social and legal developments。
According to the report, the reform was initiated by king mohammed vi in 2022, who, in a speech, pointed to the shortcomings of the current family law and stressed that the revised code should be based on the principles of “justice, equality, solidarity and harmony”, in harmony with islamic teachings and “universal values”, in order to protect the moroccan family. The new draft bill was introduced two years after consultations with civil society and judicial and religious groups, and the final outcome still requires parliamentary and royal approval。
Since its promulgation in 1957, the family code has been an important feature of morocco's modernization process and has undergone several reforms. However, since the late 1990s, the moroccan party for justice and development (pjd) has been opposed to changing morocco's family legal framework, claiming that the preservation of islamic traditions is essential to social harmony and national stability, and its leader abdelilah benkirane, in 2023, publicly criticized the “ununderstanding” of feminists working for gender equality。
The analysis of morocco's world news highlights the deep-rooted social divisions in moroccan politics that will undoubtedly affect the outcome and narrative of the forthcoming elections。
According to the newspaper the middle east, quoted by the people's network on 28 september 2021, the ministry of the interior of morocco published statistics on parliamentary elections on its website showing that the proportion of female representatives in parliamentary elections was nearly one quarter; moroccan women ranked lower in terms of economic participation and opportunities, and morocco ranked 141 out of 149 countries according to usaid。
The journalist, namboichi, intern, chiang luk
