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Morocco Grapples with Child Abandonment Crisis: 360 Newborns Left on Streets in 2018
Friday 10 January 2020, by
In Morocco, 360 babies were abandoned on the public highway in 2018, and 1,741 children left to their own devices.
These chilling figures were revealed by the Minister of Solidarity, Family and Equality, Jamila El Moussalli, to Parliament on January 6, 2020. According to the official, 1,422 judgments were handed down by the juvenile judge for abandonment cases.
A year ago, the activist Aicha Ech-chenna, in a statement to the Spanish media, had pointed out that 50,000 children are abandoned each year in Morocco, with an average of 24 babies thrown in the trash cans daily.
The official number of single mothers is not yet known; except that 10 years ago, they were estimated at nearly half a million, she added.