Moroccan Women Put Pressure on Nationality Reform

 RABAT, Morocco (WOMENSENEWS)–Under current law, Ehtimad
Bensallah’s children cannot obtain Moroccan citizenship because
nationality is conferred by fathers and her children’s father is a
foreigner.

Now the 35-year-old mother of three is part of a women’s rights
organization that is pushing for fast and broad enactment of a
law–proposed in principle by King Mohamed VI in a speech last summer–to
expand to mothers the ability to confer Moroccan nationality on their
children.

“This is a daily problem that makes many women suffer,” says Bensallah.
Without the change, a woman is an “incomplete citizen,” she adds.

The Ministry of Justice set up a commission after the king’s speech to
submit proposals to amend the current legislation and present them to
Parliament in coming months.

Since then, women’s rights activists have been anxious to gain a broad
interpretation of the law. They want it to apply retroactively to
citizenship applications by children of Moroccan women that have been
pending for years and sometimes decades. They oppose setting any age
limits on when children may apply for citizenship. They do not want the
law to apply only to certain women married to men from selected foreign
countries.

“We want the transmission of the nationality without any condition,”
emphasizes Saida Drissi Amrani, vice president of the Rabat-based
Democratic Association of Moroccan Women.

In October, Amrani’s organization issued a memorandum to the country’s
prime minister signed by 27 organizations that called for a no-conditions
law to be applied retroactively. The memo also called for the transmission
of citizenship to the husbands of Moroccan women. While Moroccan men can
transmit citizenship to their foreign wives, women cannot do the
reverse.

Follows Major 2004 Reform

The proposed change to the nationality code is viewed as a complement
to the reform made last year to the Mudawana, the personal-status law
established in 1957, that was hailed as a major step toward gender
equality.

Because of it, men can no longer “repudiate” their wives, which means
they cannot unilaterally and by their own will annul a marriage. In the
past, a man could simply tell his wife or the “adoul”–a Muslim family
affairs judge–that he was annulling the marriage, leaving his wife with
no legal recourse. Now that proceeding must go through divorce court.

The 2004 law also gives women the right to initiate divorce, the right
to marry without a “tutor”–generally her father or brother–and restricts
polygamy.

Compared to the Mudawana reform, activists see the proposed change to
the nationality code as minor, but nonetheless important.

“The Mudawana remains shaky if it is not completed with this reform,”
said Driss Ben Ali, president of Alternatives, a Casablanca-based think
tank devoted to spurring public political discussions. “The woman always
remains a minor if she doesn’t transmit her nationality.”

Local women’s and human rights activists have agitated for the latest
reform for the past four years and have intensified their efforts since
last year’s change in the family law.

Non-Citizen Children Bear Burden

They say the current citizenship code imposes a daily burden on
children born to mixed marriages. Without access to the Moroccan
nationality, such offspring must regularly negotiate the bureaucracy to
renew residence permits in their own country and can’t travel without
visas. Their citizenship is often that of their fathers’ homelands.

The heaviest burden, say activists, is that people classified as
foreign–including the children and foreign-born husbands of Moroccan
women–can’t work in public administrative posts or certain sectors. Many
must start their own businesses if they want to work in Morocco.

“They can’t work if they don’t have enough capital to finance a private
project. They can’t work in administrations, become architects, engineers
or doctors,” says Bensallah, who is part of the nationality commission at
the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women.

The 1958 nationality code stipulates that Moroccan citizenship can only
be transmitted to children born of a Moroccan father, those of single
mothers or of a stateless father.

The local press has played a pivotal role in keeping the citizenship
issue in the public eye.

After strongly advocating for the reform passed last year, the monthly
magazine Women of Morocco last summer published a string of testimonies of
women and children who feel harmed by the current nationality code.

Under the initiative of family rights advocate and sociologist Soumaya
Naamane Guessous and the magazine’s chief editor Geraldine Dulat, Women of
Morocco collected 3,745 signatures for a petition calling for a change in
the code.

Reforms Slow Despite King’s Support

Last summer, women greeted the king’s announcement of his support for
the law warmly but for some that has since curdled into impatience over
Parliament’s slow pace of acting on the issue.

“I don’t understand why it took so long,” says Drissi Amrani. “There
are children who suffer, who have wasted their lives because of this code
and who don’t know to which nation they belong.”

Khadija Bel Mina, an attendee of a seminar on the topic organized last
September by the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women, adds that she
is ordinarily optimistic but she is concerned about the slow pace of the
change in the citizenship rules. “I don’t know how long it’ll take before
I benefit from this law,” she says. Bel Mina has a 9-year-old daughter
with a man from Cameroon and is now divorced. She says the current law
encourages discrimination. “My daughter told me, ‘I’m treated
differently,'” she says.

Even though the reform is dragging, Bouchra Abdou, the national
secretary of the Democratic League for Women’s Rights, says the king’s
direct involvement with the issue gives her hope that it will be enacted.
But she regrets that political parties resisted the change and turned back
three attempts since 2001 by the Socialist Party to push through
amendments.

“Political parties have to play their role and take into consideration
the matter of women’s rights,” Abdou says. “They shouldn’t leave the path
empty and leave it only to local organizations. They have done nothing.
Where are the political parties?”

Ilhem Rachidi is a freelance writer in Morocco who has written for
Asia Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Middle East Times and
Reuters.