Child marriage in Morocco: an overt violation of human rights

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By Youssef Sourgo

Morocco World News

Casablanca, June 23, 2013

Premature marriage, child marriage and early marriage are all terms referring to the same social phenomenon. In many corners of the world, children are immersed into the cosmos of marital life before reaching the legal age, which is universally set at 18 years old. Such practice falls in the arena of human rights violations, and is condemned for stripping children of their basic rights and jeopardizing their psychological and physical safety.

Unsurprisingly, premature marriages mainly characterize phallocentric and traditional societies. Minor girls are thus the most, if not the only, ones affected by such illegal and oppressive practice. Their education is terminated as soon as a man proposes to marry them, and their marriages are arranged without their consent. A minor girl’s father and brother tend to be the major oppressive forces behind her consent in case she shows reluctance.

In Morocco, premature marriage is found in some parts of the Kingdom, especially in rural and remote areas, far from the protective lenses of human rights associations and governmental laws regulating marital life. Child marriage in Morocco is, for the most part, forced or arranged. This is to draw a distinction between the liberal, Western notion of premature marriages, in which both parties seem to decide out of love, and the other notion of premature marriage that is found in patriarchal societies. The consent of the children in forced marriages is not given any importance, and any reluctance from children is countered with coercion and violence.

In most cases, parents support premature marriage as both a financial investment and a social liberation, through which they rid themselves of a smothering responsibility towards their children. In Morocco, child marriage occurs at the expense of children’s most basic rights, namely education, a normal childhood, and, most importantly, the right to aspire and dream.

Studies reveal that the number one motive for urging a child to marry before the legal age is poverty. In Morocco, however, premature marriages also stem from the medieval traditions of regional subcultures. Some villages in Morocco even go to grant premature marriage some sort of a historical and patrimonial legitimacy. Wedding your child to someone in this case is considered a mere cultural practice in conformity with traditional customs and norms.

Though children consent to marry in some of those cases, their consent is not the result of a conscious and well-calculated decision, but rather an innocent reaction to something those children are socialized to consider very natural. Their consent in this case is not to be taken seriously, for the child in question is not fully aware of the aftermath, repercussions and risks of such a decision.

Children in Morocco marry even before puberty, and some girls experience pregnancy at very early ages. As a corollary, their physical health and sexual stability are sometimes severely affected. The striking breach between the ages of those involved in the marriage is beyond ridiculousness. In Morocco, some girls, still at the age of childish discovery, are handed over to adults aged 30 years old and more.

Statistics on premature marriages in Morocco are blurry and are still at the embryonic stage. The remoteness of those areas where such a practice is deemed normal demands rigorous efforts on the side of human rights monitors and governmental representatives. Some villages are almost unreachable. However, a report issued by the ministry of justice on 2010 unveiled an increase in the rate of premature marriages in Morocco (41,000 minor girls).

Even the basic legal procedures underlying normal marriages are neglected in child marriages in Morocco. Premature marriages in some villages in Morocco, where medieval traditions still prevail, are usually not legally documented and are grounded on a basic consent between parents. Thus, in case of divorce, no existing legal authority would compel a man to provide a divorced girl and her children with their basic rights.

In Tamalout, a village located in the province of Midelt, in the Moroccan economic region of Meknès-Tafilalet, child marriage is as customary as giving birth. All girls in the village who were questioned by the staff of the Moroccan TV Show, “Tahkik” (investigation in English), testified having been victims of forced, premature marriage.

“I was 18 when I first married my 13 years old wife,” a young man told Tahkik staff. Asked on the reasons behind marrying a minor girl, he replied, “That’s part of our tradition. You have to marry when you reach a certain age. We marry minor girls because the older ones are all married and divorced.”

According to his response, it is only the man’s age that is taken into account by agents behind premature marriages in those areas. A man has to marry when he reaches the legal age, whereas a girl’s age does not pose any issues for parents. A also has the authority to divorce and remarry whenever he pleases.

However, sometimes, both young men and minor girls seem to be victims of the same thing: medievalist, nonsensical traditions to which conservative parents still unexplainably cling. Though some elderly representatives of Tamalout village claim that they have repudiated such oppressive customs, the testimonies of the villages’ married minor girls and their realities proved the earlier claim false. Scarce are minor girls who escape to such ends in the village.

“Had I not been a student, I would have undoubtedly been compelled to marry,” a minor girl told Tahkik team. “I advise all girls my age not to marry and to pursue their studies regardless of the hindering circumstances,” added the girl..

Despite the existence of governmental laws that forbid child marriage under 18 years old, and despite an unwavering awareness of the existence of the phenomenon in some areas of Morocco, only meager efforts are put into practice to put an end to such anti-human rights practices. Until premature marriage and its repercussions are taken seriously, and until the lives of those minor girls, and their basic rights become of significance to law enforcers, child marriage will still prevail in some parts of Morocco, impeding the full respect and primacy of human rights in the Kingdom.

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Marwin Meier: G8: It's Time to Be Accountable for Ending Child Deaths

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FRANKFURT, GERMANY -- Little Omar is not agreeing to the routine medical treatment. But what little 11-month old child likes being dragged from his mom, laid on a measuring board and being prodded in the belly by a stranger? Omar vents his disagreement to the entire maternal and child health clinic here in Garowe, the regional capital of Puntland, Somalia.

Omar's mom, however, is happy for the support she is receiving from the government health-workers that monitor the recovery of her little boy. Every two weeks she comes to the clinic to have Omar checked, receive two weeks' worth of therapeutic feeding paste and be counseled on child nutrition. This is a community-based nutrition project jointly run by World Vision in Somalia and the Somalian government. The aim is to treat undernourished children at home, supporting moms with knowledge and therapeutic food, and alleviating a thinly-stretched to non-existing health system.

Recent numbers published by the UN show that the human death toll of the Horn of Africa hunger was much higher for Somalia than thought previously. In total 258,000 Somalis lost their lives during the 2010-2012 famine of which more than half, 133,000, were children under five years. This surpasses even the numbers of the terrible hunger in 1992-93.

As we approach this year's G8 Summit, the news on children and nutrition is not good. A recently published study series by the British medical journal The Lancet shows that we have underestimated the effects of undernutrition on child mortality, and approximately 45 percent of child deaths before their fifth birthday are now attributed to lack of enough or nutritious food as underlying cause, leading to a staggering 3.1 million children losing their young lives in 2012 alone to a cause we know very well how to prevent and treat.

At the 2009 G8 Summit held in the ruins of the heavily earth-quake affected Italian town of l'Aquila, the G8 and partners promised to spend $22 billion on food security by the end of 2012. Yet they have disbursed less than three quarters of that amount. At a time when child mortality could be dropping much faster, the recently published accountability report for the G8 gathering in Lough Erne, UK next week doesn't even contain a section on nutrition, exposing the G8 as giving less focus to this huge child killer at a time when all the evidence points to nutrition being pivotal in our efforts to attain the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). Well, roughly 900 days before the end-date of the MDGs we're still off track to reduce the target of reducing child deaths to 4 million per year and we know now more than ever the critical contribution of nutrition to reaching this goal.

This is no time for complacency and the good news is that we know exactly what works and what it could mean for the lives of children such as little Omar. This is why at last weekend's Nutrition for Growth Summit in London, World Vision pledged to invest $1.2 billion by 2020 in its nutrition programs. But what is really needed now is a concentrated effort by the donors and the German pledge of $200 million is just not enough. We have had much G8 rhetoric around nutrition and food security over the last several years and the renewed interest in this quintessential intervention for human development is good, but needs to be backed up by a transparent accountability framework that can trace every promised dollar. Whether to report on progress made cannot be left to the gusto of a given G8-host, it must become part and parcel of every G8 accountability report. This we owe to the vulnerable little ones like Omar and his mom, who left the clinic with better knowledge and a two-week ration of therapeutic food thanks to a successful cooperation of a thoughtful donor, a cooperative government and a supportive development organization. We need more of this!

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and the NGO alliance InterAction around the G8 summit being held in Northern Ireland, June 17-18. For the next eight days, we will be featuring one post from an NGO based in each of the G8 countries -- this piece is from Germany -- and then one blog from the vantage point of the developing world. To see all the posts in the series, click here. For more information on InterAction, click here. And follow the conversation on Twitter with hashtag #DearG8.

Photo: Courtesy of World Vision

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Some 92,000 children aged 7-15 are engaged in child labour in Morocco (HCP)

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Rabat – June 12, 2013 (MAP)

Some 92,000 children aged 7-15 are engaged in child labour in Morocco, or 1.9 pc of all children in this age group, according to the results of a survey of the High Commission for Planning (HCP) issued on the occasion of the World Day against Child Labour observed annually on June 12.

The phenomenon of child labor in Morocco is however in sharp decline since 1999 when it touched 9.7 pc of all children of 7 to less than 15 years, or 517,000 children, says the survey, stressing that the child labor is concentrated mainly in rural areas where it touches 3.9 pc of children (85,000) against 16.2 pc in 1999 (452,000 children).

In the cities, this phenomenon concerns 0.3 pc of urban children (7000) against 2.5 pc in 1999 (65,000 children), the same source adds, noting that more than nine working children in ten (92 .4 per cent) live in rural areas.

Moreover, this phenomenon affects more boys than girls (54.1 pc are male). This proportion varies from 51.1 pc to 90.3 pc in urban areas.

Depending on the circumstances, 21.7 pc of children work alongside their schooling, 59.2 pc dropped out of school and 19.1 pc have never attended school.

The UNICEF estimates that nearly one in six children aged 5–14 are engaged in child labour in the world.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 7.4 million children in the same age group are domestic workers.