Morocco Considers Expanding Rights for Divorced Mothers in Child Custody Cases

"I wanted to enroll my son in a school closer to my home, but his father opposed it," denounces Ilham to the newspaper Le Monde. Dounia’s ex-husband, for his part, did not give her permission to open a bank account in the name of their daughter. Nadia, for her part, could not take her two children on vacation in France because her ex-husband objected. This is the ordeal that divorced women live, unable to carry out simple administrative procedures for their children without the consent of their father.

In Morocco, the divorced father "remains the sole legal representative of the children," even if "custody is almost always entrusted to the mother," explains Zahia Ammoumou, lawyer and legal consultant for the association Tahadi for Equality and Citizenship, specifying that "guardianship automatically reverts to the father, unless he disappears or is unfit." Yet the equality between men and women is enshrined in the Moroccan Constitution of 2011.

Even if the reform of the Family Code (Moudawana) in 2004 gave women the right to request divorce, which was considered "a considerable advance," it did not take into account the post-divorce period, deplores Khadija El Amrani, lawyer and member of a collective engaged in the defense of fundamental freedoms. "The mother educates, takes care, but has no rights over the child," she criticizes. "There is real distress among divorced mothers," notes lawyer Youssef Fassi-Fihri, stressing the "urgency to thoroughly review the Family Code."

The activist also denounces the "national average of 400 dirhams per month and per child [about 36 euros]" for alimony, and the allowance of about 100 dirhams paid in return for custody. "What can a mother do with these sums supposed to allow her to feed her child, clothe him, educate him? It’s outrageous," he says, also considering "derisory" the housing costs borne by the father (between 300 and 3,000 dirhams). Nabil Benabdellah, secretary general of the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS), announced proposals to allow the mother to "obtain guardianship without conditions and that the custody of the child no longer be taken away from her if she remarries".