Women organizations send prime minister memo on violence against women

Moroccan centers offering assistance to women victims of violence have urged prime minister, Abderrahmane Youssoufi, to take all measures to extend the concept of violence to household violence.

In a memo made public last Thursday at a press conference, officials at the centers also request that Nov.25 be proclaimed national day to promote awareness and assess programs carried out to eliminate violence against women.

Officials from the "NEJMA" "ANNAJDA" centers also asked in the memorandum for the implementation of proposals regarding sexual harassment, improving conditions where violence victims are receives in police centers and hire for the police center specialists in social and medical assistance.

Other requests included in the memo are legal measures that would authorize health professionals to transmit to the police cases of women victims of violence and allowing women associations to be a plaintiff part in cases of violence against women.

The two centers said family violence account for 80% of all cases they handled in 1999 and this year. Both victims and aggressors belong to all social layers: unemployed people, workers, tradesmen, lawyers, physicians. They said one of the aggressors was a psychology doctor and another one was a diplomat.