Several Moroccan public institutions have shambled to correct Moroccan maps on their websites excluding the Western Sahara after condemnation across social media networks.
TheHigh Authority for Audiovisual Communication, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Moroccan Royal Federation of Football (FRMF), among others, have been under fire from Moroccan internet users, who raised concerns about the display of a severed “Western Sahara” on public website maps, urging the institutions to pay closer attention to such details.
Many public Moroccan institutions attributed the incorrect depiction of Morocco’s map on their official websites to an automatically embedded map from Google Maps.
A number of websites utilize the Google Maps application programming interface to display maps and geographical information. For this reason, any inaccuracies in Google’s mapping data may appear on those websites.
An X user shared many screenshots of the incorrect maps across Moroccan websites, namely from HACA’s official website that showed the inclusion of the wrong Morocco map, with the mention of a separate “Western Sahara.”
السادة الهيئة العليا للإتصال السمعي البصري @HACAMAROC هل بنشركم خريطة مقطوعة للمغرب هل أتم بذلك تعترفون بجمهورية الوهم ومرتزقة البوليزاريو؟
سي أخنوش شوف حتى هادو @ChefGov_ma يا حكومة الكفاءة??♂️
مالين الانتقال الرقمي وقتاش غادي تفيقو؟ @MezzourGhita
السادة @AnrtPage شي حل نهائي؟! pic.twitter.com/eSq1RtbUY9— Simo Ben (@Simo__Ben) December 3, 2023
Hespress EN reached out to HACA for clarification. The institution refuted these claims and stressed that it was false information.
According to a HACA spokesperson, their website includes a “one and only interactive map” that encompasses all the territories of the Kingdom, without any mention of the Sahara Sahara.”
The same person added, “both on our site and the geolocation, no information appears there,” explaining that what the
The same X user brought people’s attention, this time, to the incorrect map displayed on the HCP (High Commission of Planning) official website.
He vehemently criticized the inadvertent mistake, stating, “How can we trust HCP’s statistics and figures while it cannot even publish the correct map of Morocco?”
Hespress EN contacted HCP for clarification, and the representative explained that “it was Google’s mistake.” The same person added that it was an inadvertent mistake and promised to resolve it.
The map was then shortly corrected.
The Moroccan Royal Federation of Football (FMRF) was also targeted in the campaign, as its official website included Morocco’s map divided into two, with a specific mention of “Western Sahara.”
The same X user shed light on the same issue on the FMRF website, posting a screen recording of his visit to the website and documenting the inclusion of the wrong map.
However, as soon as the federation learned about the technical issue, it immediately halted the integration of Google Maps into the website and replaced it with a frozen picture.
Speaking to FMRF, The representative explained that including the inaccurate map was not intentional. Rather, he said that it was a result of a technical issue related to the Google engine.
The same spokesperson announced that the federation is working on updating the entire website, with the anticipated launch planned for Friday.
The campaign did not stop at the aforementioned institutions. Instead, X users started scrutinizing all the state entities’ official websites, calling on them to pay close attention to this detail even if the mistake was unintentional, given the issue’s sensitivity.
Many of the public institutions targeted in this recent campaign reacted to the issue, as they immediately changed the inaccurate map, once they learned about it, to another one that encompasses all of Morocco’s territories, including the Moroccan Sahara.
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