Morocco Removes Father’s Consent Requirement for Children’s Passports

Good news for Moroccan women. In response to a written question from MP Mohamed Hichami of the Haraki group, Abdelouafi Laftit assured that the current procedure does not require the consent of fathers to issue a passport for minors. "The person concerned, their ascendants, descendants, spouse, widow, guardian or curator, the person in charge of them, or their proxy, or their guarantor or the applicant for guardianship according to the legislation relating to the guardianship of abandoned children, have the right to obtain extracts of civil status acts," added the minister. He concluded: "Therefore, married or divorced women can obtain copies of their children’s birth certificates without needing the father’s permission, whether inside or outside the national territory."

The department is also working to simplify the procedures for obtaining civil status documents in order to improve its services and bring them closer to users. A national program for the modernization of civil status has thus been put in place, in order to introduce modern information and communication technologies. "To this end, a national digital civil status system has been created and regulated, based on new interconnected mechanisms through a private network, allowing the citizen to declare a birth or death, and to obtain these documents in any civil status office inside the kingdom or outside or remotely, via all available means of communication," explained Laftit. Already adopted in various civil status offices in the kingdom, this new system will gradually be extended to civil status offices in various Moroccan consulates and diplomatic missions abroad.

As this digital system is not yet operational outside the national territory, the Ministry of the Interior has created an electronic counter for administrative document requests "Watiqa". This counter will allow citizens inside Morocco or abroad to request copies of their birth certificates via the Internet and receive them at their home by registered mail.