Moroccan Star Fati Jamali Calls for Women’s Rights on Mother’s Day, Highlights Passport Struggle

"The mother does not need a day for people to write a sentence about her on social media, the woman and the mother need to be given the most basic of their rights. They need equality, the one I heard about, but which unfortunately does not exist," writes actress Fati Jamali on her Instagram account. She accompanied her post with a photo of her with her son. For several months, the latter has been a "stateless person". His mother has not been able to have a passport issued for him. And for good reason, in Morocco, a divorced mother cannot apply for a passport for her child without the father’s authorization.

"The father remains the legal representative of his minor children even after the divorce," but "the custody of minor children does not confer on the mother the status of legal representative of her children," specifies the Ministry of the Interior on its website cited by Le360. In other words, only the child’s father can apply for a passport without the authorization of a third party. "Where is the equality?" questions Fati Jamali. The law justifies this inequality by the fact that "the woman can run away with her children," she recalls before asking: "how many men have run away with their children leaving the mother on the brink of madness?" She says she is "for equal rights that give the father what is given to the mother".