Morocco Moves to Criminalize Child Marriage, Minister Calls Practice "Unacceptable"

"The issue of child marriage should no longer be raised. It must be settled, because it is unacceptable for a girl to be deprived of her schooling and her childhood," Abdellatif Ouahbi said on January 3, in a talk show on the Moroccan channel al-Aoula. The Minister of Justice and Secretary General of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) considers this practice as "rape", therefore a crime that should be punished by law. Questioned on the subject on November 28 in parliament, he said he was in favor of "the criminalization of child marriage", recalling that "the minimum age of marriage must be 18 years old, not below".

Although the legislator has set the age of majority at 18 years old, he has left the judge the power to authorize the marriage of minors "by a reasoned decision specifying the interest and reasons justifying this marriage..." (Article 20 of the Family Code or Moudawana). Out of nearly 28,930 requests for authorization of child marriages in 2021, the judge granted 20,000, most against the opinion of the public prosecutor, i.e. an acceptance rate of 70%, reports Middle East Eye, specifying that 13,000 requests out of nearly 20,000 had been authorized a year earlier, according to a report from the public prosecutor’s office which warns against the worrying increase in these authorizations since 2004.

The Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) had also denounced the phenomenon. "The problem is that the legislator, by derogating from the standards he himself has set regarding marriage, has at the same time created confusion and antinomies in the laws that weaken the legal protection of children," it stated in a report published in 2019, also noting the harmful consequences of this marriage on the mental and physical health of young girls. "Mothers between 15 and 19 years old are twice as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth [...] and are very exposed to family and conjugal violence, physical, sexual and verbal," notes the CESE.

"The non-schooling and premature dropout of girls, the inequality between men and women, the lack of access to quality education, health and justice services, are considered both as causes and consequences of child marriage and factors perpetuating this practice," the CESE specifies in its report. To remedy the problem, the power of exemption granted to the judge must be removed and child marriage must be "criminalized", Abdellatif Ouahbi assures. This is the objective of the reform of the Penal Code initiated by the government, and strongly opposed by the Islamist party, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD).