Family Code improved the legal framework for women's rights, Amnesty International
Morocco, Politics, 5/26/2005

Amnesty International (AI) has hailed Morocco's adoption of the family code, saying it "significantly improved the legal framework for women's rights."

In its annual report 2005, the London-based organization explained that "husbands and wives were accorded equal and joint responsibility for running the family home and bringing up children, and the wife's duty of obedience to her husband was rescinded" under the new code.

The family code, adopted by the Moroccan parliament in January 2004, notably aimed at improving the situation of woman in society.

"The minimum age of marriage for women was raised from 15 to 18, the same as for men, and the requirement of a male marital tutor (wali) for women to marry was eliminated," the report pointed out, adding that "severe restrictions were imposed on polygamy."

"The right to divorce by mutual consent was established and unilateral divorce by the husband was placed under strict judicial control," it went on.

In addition, Amnesty pointed out to the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER), inaugurated by King Mohammed VI to "close the file on past human rights violations."

"One of its tasks is to complete payment of compensation to victims of "disappearances" and arbitrary detention that occurred between the 1950s and 1990s," explains AI.

IER is also "charged with providing other forms of reparation to enable victims to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into the society, and with proposing measures to prevent recurrence of such human rights violations," it went on.

By December 2004, the Commission had received requests for reparations concerning more than 16,000 victims, noted AI, adding that IER's other task is "to establish the fate of hundreds of people who 'disappeared' in previous the decades and, in the case of those who died in detention, to locate their remains."

AI explained that IER began preparing a report, due in 2005, to "set out the reasons and institutional responsibilities for grave violations up to 1999."

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