Tunisia Outperforms Western Nations in Global Children’s Rights Ranking, Morocco Lags Behind

Tunisia has just achieved an exceptional performance in terms of respect for children’s rights. With a score of 0.879/1, Tunisia is in first place in Africa and the Arab world and surpasses so-called developed countries like Norway (16th) or Canada (49th). In North Africa, this score achieved by Tunisia allows it to outperform its neighbors, such as Egypt (36th), Algeria (64th), Libya (73rd) and Morocco, which brings up the rear (75th).

It should be noted that this study ranks the 181 countries in the world that have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. According to this same study, Tunisia’s strength is health (0.946/1), its weakness is education with a score of 0.752/1. For its part, Iceland is at the top of the pack, with an overall score of 0.967/0, followed by Portugal (0.948) and Switzerland (0.937).

Morocco is called upon to do better

This study conducted by the Dutch KidsRights Foundation clearly shows that Morocco holds the red lantern in the Maghreb in terms of defending children’s rights. This, despite the efforts that the kingdom continues to make to offer this segment of the population a better well-being. Indeed, in addition to what the 2011 Constitution enshrines in its Article 32 the rights of children, including the right to basic education, equal legal protection and equal social consideration, and stipulates their protection, Morocco has a National Action Plan for the Child (PANE) and a National Executive Program for the Integrated Public Policy for Child Protection.

While on the issue of child poverty, which is one of the major obstacles to their development, the efforts deployed by the Kingdom in favor of child protection are certainly full of hope, it remains that the overall efforts must be redoubled to reduce several social phenomena, including school dropout, child labor, child marriage and street children, which are also real sources of concern about the situation of children in Morocco.