Law targets violence against women in Morocco

08/02/2007

A new bill to combat violence against women aims to provide them with protection and safe harbour. In addition to spousal violence, the bill targets sexual harassment and other forms of economic and social violence.

By Imane Belhaj for Magharebia in Casablanca – 08/02/07

[Getty Images] The new draft law targets violence against women in Morocco.

The Secretariat of State for the Family, Childhood and the Handicapped has sent a draft bill on combating violence against women to various Moroccan women’s associations requesting suggestions and observations.

According to the secretariat, the bill is considered "an important step in the continuous establishment of the legal framework for protecting women’s humanitarian rights and strengthening this protection". It primarily aims to provide protection and safe harbour for women victims of violence.

"Daily practice revealed the existence of several holes and problems connected to the legal texts or the social reality, and it’s necessary to counteract them and to put forth solutions and answers. Further, reality showed new forms of violence linked to economic, social and cultural circumstances … But the law remained limited in combating this phenomenon," Bouchra Abdou, a member of the national office of the Democratic League for Women’s Rights, said.

In addition to spousal violence, the bill targets sexual harassment and other forms of economic and social violence, and recognizes the role undertaken by listening centres and associations.

The new law further stipulates that women employees or workers who are victims of violence shall benefit, within the bounds of their workplaces, from reduced work hours or temporary cessation of work when necessitated by their psychological state or state of health. The women's rights and benefits are guaranteed under the Labour Law. Further, women victims of violence are given priority in changing work location when doing so is necessary to protect them, on the condition that the need for these exigencies is verified by a report from specialised medical authorities.

Abdou says the new law must set down a clear concept of violence directed against women that encompasses all of its forms -- including psychological violence, such as "all verbal attack, shouting, mockery or using censure or social ostracism, detention, or intimidation, also encompassing verbal threat or any exploitation for the purpose of controlling another person".

In a memo filed with the secretariat and the interior and justice ministries, the Democratic League for Women’s Rights called for the law to extend to "all places". The league also deemed it necessary to add a clause related to providing training and professional qualification opportunities to battered women, along with creating social assistance institutions to benefit women victims of violence at health centres and the prosecution office of the judiciary police.

The anticipated law for combating violence against women includes four sections with 26 texts, identifying violence and its forms and the places where it is perpetrated and clarifying the penitentiary procedures for violence.