Morocco’s Underage Marriage Loophole: Legal Exception Becomes Common Practice

"While Morocco is a signatory to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its Family Code sets the minimum age of marriage at 18 years, Article 20 of the Family Code empowers the judge to authorize the marriage of minors under certain conditions, without however specifying a minimum threshold for the derogation from the legal age," notes Zoubida Reghay, a doctor in egalitarian public policies in an op-ed published by ENASS.ma.

Citing a study by the Ministry of Justice and Freedoms, she said that the number of underage marriages has continued to increase year after year since 2004, the year the Family Code came into effect, until reaching a peak in 2011, rising from 18,341 to 39,031 cases. The phenomenon begins to decline slightly each year, with 25,514 cases recorded in 2018, according to the latest available official statistics. The same study reveals that in 2018, 85% of the requests for marriage authorization filed with the judges concerned minors, compared to 85.46% in 2013 and 88.81% in 2004.

Furthermore, "underage marriage also affects both urban and rural areas," notes the academic. Proof of this, for women married before the age of 18, 52% live in urban areas, according to the 2019 statistics of the Ministry of Justice. She deplores the fact that underage marriage, which is an exception provided for by law, has become the rule. But there is still hope. Abdellatif Ouahbi, Minister of Justice, promises to remedy this through the reform of the Penal Code. "The issue of underage 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," he had declared on January 3 in a talk show on the Moroccan channel al-Aoula.