Global Issues

Morocco

• Victims’ families may offer rapists marriage as an alternative to preserve family honour.

• Prosecution for statutory rape may be cancelled if the defendant agrees to marry victim.

• Source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children who are subjected to sex trafficking.

• Women, and increasing number of children from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Philippines enter Morocco voluntarily but illegally smuggled in and some coerced into prostitution.

• Most female sex trafficking victims are Nigerian.

• 6.4% of women in Morocco report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 6.6% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 35.3% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 23% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

• 62.8% of women reported intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual and/or physical violence in their lifetime in the 12 months prior to a 2009-2010 survey.

• Spousal rape is not a crime.

 

Advocacy:

• Pastor David Brown and Julie Brown of the French Protestant Church have worked tirelessly, often at great personal risk, to assist sub-Saharan trafficking victims and clandestine migrants in Morocco. The church is one of the few places trafficking victims can turn for help in Morocco, since the government does not offer assistance to such victims.

• Democratic League for Women’s Rights

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data:  Surveys  by  Country 2011; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2009; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011