Morocco Faces Crisis: Over 90,000 Children Lack Legal Identity, Impacting Education and Healthcare

These children do not hold any proof of their identity and cannot then benefit from fundamental rights such as education and health. The main causes of this problem are marriages contracted without legal documents, unregistered births or simply parental neglect, noted the Minister of Human Rights.

According to the report, the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region has the largest number of cases, with 28,346 undocumented persons. Fès-Meknès and Marrakech-Safi follow, respectively, with the second and third highest numbers, with 15,510 and 14,085 cases.

Faced with these alarming figures, the Moroccan government has anticipated by launching two national campaigns urging parents to register their children in the civil status registers.

In addition to children, adults have also been taken into account by these campaigns. Thanks to them, 9,370 previously undocumented adults have been registered, as well as 75% of the total number of women.

In October 2019, the Minister of the Interior gave firm instructions to national administrations in order to facilitate the registration of children born from an unregistered marriage.

These new instructions aim to simplify the procedures for parental recognition in order to reduce the problems related to the registration of children.