Moroccan reparations program to include vocational training

08/06/2008

Morocco's employment ministry signed an agreement this week to further improve its reparations programmes for victims of human rights violations. Plans include expediting health insurance for 12,000 additional victims and expanding vocational training options.

By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat - 08/06/08

[Sarah Touahri] Moroccan employment minister Jamal Aghmani (left) and CCDH president Ahmed Herzenniof ink a co-operation agreement to further efforts to rehabilitate victims of human rights abuses.

As part of ongoing efforts to implement the recommendations of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER), Morocco's Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training signed a partnership and co-operation agreement with the Human Rights Consultative Council (CCDH) on Monday (June 2nd).

Victims of human rights abuse will benefit from the Ministry of Employment's contributions to individual and community reparation programmes which provide victims with access to vocational training and professional development services through the National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills (ANAPEC).

CCDH president Ahmed Herzenniof said he hopes the experiment will be a success and said both parties will work together to spread a culture of human rights through training sessions.

Priority will go to regions covered by the reparation programme, such as Figuig, Errachidia, Zagora, Ouarzazate, Khenifra and Nador, where new ANAPEC desks and branches are planned.

The CCDH, meanwhile, has committed itself to preparing studies and proposals regarding victim rehabilitation and compensation for damage. The organisation is also training staff at the Ministry of Employment on rights issues.

Minister of Employment and Vocational Training Jamal Aghmani said the major goal of the training initiative is to enable civil servants, from administrators to teachers, to benefit the public by adopting a human-rights-based approach in their daily work.

The ministry will also contribute 100 million dirhams in 2009 for vocational training through apprenticeships, Aghmani said.

He noted that under the 2007 agreement between the CCDH, the government and the State Social Welfare Bodies Fund, 2,094 victims of human rights violations received health insurance.

"We’re hoping to speed things up so that 12,000 people can be provided with insurance, as stipulated in the agreement. It’s through agreements of this kind that we can come to terms with the past and build a better future," he commented.

Amina Bouaayache, president of the Moroccan Human Rights Organisation, told Magharebia that the agreement signed on June 2nd is a new stage in the community reparation process which observers must monitor in order to assess future outcomes.

Parliamentarian Lahcen Daoudi of the Party of Justice and Development supported the initiative, saying that society must compensate and support victims of human rights violations, and that the right to training and employment must be guaranteed for all citizens.

King Mohammed VI established the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) in 2004 to rehabilitate victims of human rights abuses during the 1961-1999 rule of his late father, King Hassan II.

The Commission's self-defined mandate is to "support the democratic transition of the country, to build the rule of law, and to spread the values and culture of citizenship and human rights".