Case of Moroccan actress Jamila El Haouni reignites calls for Family Code reform

The case of Moroccan actress Jamila El Haouni’s lawsuit against her ex-husband, actor Amine Ennaji reignited the debate on the need to reform the Family Code in Morocco, as public opinion expresses unfailing solidarity with the actress.

Association “Kif Mamak, Kif Babak” (your mom and your dad are the same thing), expressed its solidarity with the Moroccan actress in her case with her ex-husband concerning the administrative guardianship of his son.

Following great interest with the case of Jamila El Haouni, “who before being an actress, is first and foremost a mother,” the association “Kif mamak, Kif babak” estimated that the Moroccan actress is “a victim of discriminatory laws within the Family Code itself.

“In order for the artist to be able to manage the legal and administrative affairs of his minor son, in particular those related to school registration and the facilitation of his trips abroad within the framework of sports or educational exchanges, the mother finds her hands tied with the condition of the agreement of the father, her ex-husband, who refuses. This knowing that the latter is absent from all aspects of the life of his son“, explained the Association.

In addition, it is the mother, Jamila El Haouni, “who takes care of her son and ensures all the requirements related to his education”, recalls the association, noting that this is a situation “of which suffer thousands of Moroccan women, mothers who come in second place after the father, to manage the affairs of their children and represent them in legal affairs, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the principles of equality and an attack on the best interests of the child.

While deploring this “injustice” and “strongly condemning these laws“, the Association “Kif mamak, Kif babak” announced “its support and solidarity with the actress Jamila El Haouni and all the women victims of these laws discrimination”, thus calling on “all the components of civil society in Morocco to join El Haouni’s call for help, in order to demand, and with one voice, total and radical change of the Family Code.

It should be recalled that Jamila El Haouni has taken legal action to obtain administrative guardianship of her minor son and requires a rapid judgment to be able to provide him with the administrative documents necessary for certain urgent requests.

Not enough

Eighteen years after its adoption in 2004, the Moudawana no longer seems to correspond to the aspirations of Moroccan women and the time has come for revision, as civil society has insisted, led by many associations for several years.

The reform of the new Moudawan in 2004, was a big step towards the emancipation of Moroccan women. Adopted unanimously by the Parliament, the text brings significant changes: the passage of the minimum legal age of marriage from 15 years to 18 years, the possibility for the woman to ask for the divorce and the alleviation of the conditions of this one, the joint responsibility of the father and the mother within the family home and, finally, a new more restrictive framework to regulate the practice of polygamy.

The Minister of Justice Abdellatif Ouahbi in an oral hearing last year stressed that the experience relating to the implementation of the Moudawana has been marked by dysfunctions at the structural level as well as at the legal level, noting in this regard the directives of King Mohammed VI quoted in the Throne Day speech the same year about this reform.

The Minister noted that the dysfunctions of the Moudawana are the subject of a current debate between the various state institutions. Also, the Minister specified that “only 67% of the courts are fully structured, with 52 family justice sections”. He also stressed the need to review current marriage and divorce procedures.

Ouahbi also insisted on Morocco’s commitment to international conventions in this area and said, in this regard: “We have received so many recommendations and remarks from several feminist organizations, competent in the matter. We will take them into consideration, thus taking into account the international conventions adopted by the Kingdom, since this reflects the commitment of our country”.

Although Morocco has made significant progress in terms of promoting equality and eliminating gender-based discrimination, the reforms and the Family Code still have flaws and a number of shortcomings that highlight these issues within Moroccan society, according to a report on human rights prepared by the Israr Coalition for Equality and Empowerment.

The Israr coalition, an NGO which devotes its work to the promotion of human rights, revealed, in a report it presented at a seminar organized December last year, that certain Moroccan laws, including the Code of family, remain inconsistent compared to the objectives to be achieved. It specifies that this concerns divorce procedures, material obligations at the family level and lineage and filiation procedures, among others.

Regarding divorce proceedings, the coalition’s report points to the fact that some formalities are exclusively dedicated to women as if the relative grounds could not be applied to men or invoked by them. The example case is divorce for slander, a procedure which is reserved for women only since men are unable to invoke it despite the evidence presented noting that it has still not been regulated in their favor. .

As for the discriminations implicit in the Family Code, the organization evokes the material obligations relating to the two parties sharing a marital relationship. For the legislator, the woman is not recognized as a contributor to family expenses except in situations where the husband finds himself unemployed, absent or unable to perform his task as provider or father of the family.

The organization has in particular tried to highlight the provisions of article 148 of the code which stipulate that illegitimate filiation does not create any of the effects of legal filiation, which means that children born of an extramarital relationship have no right to benefit from the rights emanating from legal filiation such as alimony and inheritance… The absence of a real application of anti-discrimination laws worries the coalition which underlines the weak implementation of the legal provisions which criminalize them, especially that no trial of this kind has been presented to the courts despite the persistence of this problem.