Morocco Activists Renew Push to Decriminalize Extramarital Sex, Citing Youth Oppression

In an open letter to the Minister of Justice, these citizens have returned to the charge to demand the repeal of Article 490, with an argument on legal, historical and human rights aspects.

Specifically, the 490 Collective has again called for the removal of Article 490, punishing "imprisonment of one month to one year all persons of different sex who, not being united by the bonds of marriage, have sexual relations with each other".

Recalling that the Penal Code has remained unchanged since 1961 on the fundamental right to dispose of one’s body, the Collective stressed that "adult and consenting citizens or victims of sexual violence have seen their lives shattered by this iniquitous law which promotes arbitrariness and is instrumentalized to silence those who disturb by their opinion, their way of life or who, simply, pay the price of a jealous ex-husband, an intrusive neighbor, a too zealous guardian". In short, "Article 490 fires on all cylinders as the vagueness of its wording is vast".

Today, the government’s mission is to "think, understand and then act", the Collective believes in its letter, which calls for thinking about women victims of rape, blackmail for the dissemination of intimate images or other sexual violence who will never be able to file a complaint for fear of being unjustly arrested on the basis of Article 490.

"Judges, instead of focusing their attention on the facts and the degree of violence that accompanied them, strive to search for the existence of a prior relationship between the victim and her aggressor. Very often, this results in condemning the victim to a prison sentence. Such cases sometimes end in tragedy as was the case with the suicide of the young Khadija this year," the Collective recalls.

Through this measure, the government will demonstrate "its commitment to taking into account the voices of victims of sexual violence and the demands of young people and to put an end to the prevailing hypocrisy, the fruit of the gap between the current state of Moroccan society and the justice that governs it," it concludes.