Are Morocco’s new anti-sexual-harassment laws enough?

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Siobhán O’Grady.

The Moroccan government is applauding an anti-violence-against-women law that took effect this week, while activists say it falls short of giving women the protections they need. This all comes after a five-year effort to get such a law passed — and just weeks after a teenage girl told local media she had been violently kidnapped, raped and branded by a gang, sparking growing concerns about violence against women in the country.

The law offers a variety of protections for women who report harassment or violence in Morocco, bans forced marriage, and mandates fines and even short prison sentences for people convicted of sexual harassment in a public space. It is the first time that women in Morocco will have legal pathways to seek justice from such behavior.

Morocco debates a law to protect women in public spaces. Passing it is another matter.

Violence against women is widespread in Morocco. A 2009 government survey asked women between the ages of 18 to 65 whether they had been victims of various forms of violence, including physical and psychological. Nearly 63 percent said yes.

Bassima Hakkaoui, the country’s minister for women’s issues, told the official Maghreb Arabe Presse news agency that it is “one of the most important texts strengthening the national legal arsenal in the area of equality of the sexes.”

But Nouzha Skalli, the former minister for women’s affairs, said that the law is a disappointment.

“It only modified some articles of the penal code and can’t be considered like a great breakthrough in the struggle against violence against women,” she told Jeune Afrique magazine after the bill passed in February.

Specifically, she raised concerns that the legislation does not specifically criminalize marital rape and said that some parts of the text are too ambiguous. She told Jeune Afrique that “rape is still considered a violation of [a woman’s] modesty, even though international law defines it as a violation of women’s physical integrity.”

Morocco has historically lacked legal avenues for women to pursue justice over such abuse. Even now, advocates fear that the new law will not, in practice, make justice much more accessible for victims. A Human Rights Watch statement issued in February said that “most women drop the few criminal cases that are filed as a result of pressure from their or their abuser’s families or because they are financially dependent on their abusers.” And Human Rights Watch has criticized the fact that the law does not specifically define domestic violence.