Morocco's human rights experience underscored in London

Morocco's experience in human rights was underscored at the biennial meeting of the Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies (May 18-20) that opened Wednesday in the British capital.

President of the Supreme court and the Royal Academy, Driss Dahak, told MAP the Moroccan experience drew a "broad interest" of participants.

Dahak made at the meeting an exposé on the strides made by Morocco in human rights since the nineties when late King Hassan II took a series of initiatives in this sense, including the setting up of the Advisory Council for Human Rights (CCDH).

The creation, he said, of an independent arbitration commission, inside the Council, to examine complaints filed by people whose rights were violated was a turning point in the promotion of human rights in the kingdom.

Dahak also recalled the creation of the Justice and Reconciliation Commission (IER) that organized public hearings for human rights violations victims who testified publicly about tortures, abuses and other humiliating treatments they were subjected to in the past.

In the same year, he went on, a new family code was adopted to protect the rights of women and children while preserving the family's unity and cohesion.

Dahak evoked other measures that were undertaken in Morocco to protect the rights of vulnerable persons such as the disabled, children and old people.

Morocco, he concluded, is currently working to further promote economic, social and cultural rights.

The meeting of the Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies was attended by nearly fifty academy scholars from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.