Fight Against Racism: Morocco's Efforts Highlighted Before UN HRC

Morocco’s efforts at various levels in preventing and combating racism were highlighted Wednesday in Geneva during a debate on this scourge at the UN Human Rights Council.

Speaking in the context of the consideration of a report on emerging digital technologies and racial discrimination, Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and International Organizations in Geneva, ambassador Omar Zniber, stressed that “the Kingdom has constantly reaffirmed its commitment to rights, diversity, openness and tolerance, thus creating a basis for living together”.

Those rights were guaranteed by the Constitution, article 23 of which explicitly prohibited any incitement to racism, violence and hatred.

He also recalled that Morocco has established several constitutional institutions aimed at promoting and protecting human rights in their entirety, in addition to the creation of a ministry in charge of equality, whose main task is to integrate equality considerations into public institutions and to anchor them more firmly in society, notably through the appropriate use of digital means.

The ambassador pointed out that Morocco, which had hosted the international seminar on the follow-up to the Rabat plan of action on the prohibition of all forms of hate and the Global Compact for Safe and Regular Migration, would also host the World Summit of the Alliance of Civilizations at the end of the year, so many events that had addressed and would tackle the issue of racism also in its digital dimension.

In the same spirit of commitment to the fight against this scourge, Morocco has explicitly prohibited in its national legislation certain manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, particularly as part of the labor code, the penal code and the press and publishing code, as well as through the mission of the national data monitoring agency, he stressed.