House of Representatives Organizes First Edition of the Morocco-EU Countries Forum of Women Parliamentarians

The House of Representatives organized on Friday, December 13, 2024, the first edition of the Morocco-EU Countries Forum of Women Parliamentarians, within the framework of the Institutional Twinning Project between the Moroccan House of Representatives and the European Union, with the participation of a large number of women representatives of the partner parliaments.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Rachid Talbi El Alami, inaugurated the Forum with an address where he called for establishing means of cooperation, sharing experiences, and mutual recognition of national practices in the field of equality in legislative institutions, and representative and executive decision-making centers in general, and through them, the quest for equality in public life.

The Speaker also stressed that women’s presence in public institutions, private enterprises, political parties, and civil society organizations should reflect the principle of equality and parity, calling for the engineering of national legislation, public policies, and social services in a way that they always take into account the criterion of gender equality, and sometimes even adopt positive discrimination in favor of women.

The Speaker explained that the path to full equality is still long and arduous, and that it must remain a common aspiration for women and men together, and in different institutions, in order to build on the accumulation of institutional and legislative reforms that lead to this goal.

For her part, the Speaker of the French National Assembly, Hon. Yaël Braun-Pivet, focused on the important role that women play in political life, arguing that the ultimate goal that everyone must adopt is that the figure of 50% must represent women's true place in society.

Hon. Braun-Pivet also shed light the French experience in equality, stressing that even France still witnesses some manifestations of inequality, explaining that within the French National Assembly, women only make up 36% of the total number of deputies.

During the same event, Mr. Rucco Busco, Head of the Governance Division of the European Union Delegation in Morocco, highlighted in his intervention the role played by parliaments in consolidating the values of equality and sensitizing citizens to women's issues, noting the increase of women’s representation in parliaments, and called for the expression of political will worldwide to meet the challenge of equality. In the same context, he praised the high representation of women in the two Houses of Moroccan Parliament, thanks to the quota system, and congratulated the Kingdom of Morocco for enacting several laws to combat violence and discrimination.

The rest of the interventions at the opening sitting underscored the importance of organizing this Forum, which represents an important platform to promote women's parliamentary participation and representation, highlighting the experience of Belgium, Hungary, Greece and Portugal in this field, and reviewing the gradual development of women's representation in parliaments. The participants also noted that achieving parity and equality requires more joint efforts.

During this forum, two roundtables were held. The first one discussed the theme of political participation. In this regard, Rep. Najwa Koukouss, Chairperson of the Thematic Group in Charge of Equality and Parity, gave a presentation on the various developments that Morocco has witnessed in this field, especially the 2011 Constitution that stipulates the commitment to protect human rights taking into account their universal nature, fight all forms of discrimination, and respect the primacy of international agreements over national legislation, and the creation of the Authority for Parity and the Fight against all Forms of Discrimination.

On this occasion, the participants praised the royal directives that paid special attention to women's issues since the first Throne speech, as well as the launch of the reform of the Personal Status Code in 2003, followed by the reform of the Family Code.

The participants shed light on the experiences of their countries in the field of parity and the implementation of quotas. They also called for more partisan democracy and work to revise the legal arsenal for elections, and change the by-laws of parties.

The second roundtable debated the topic women in parliamentary diplomacy, where the importance of feminist diplomacy was discussed as it provides added value to parliamentary and official diplomacy. The participants in the roundtable emphasized that feminist diplomacy is one of the mechanisms of advocacy in the diplomatic field on issues related to women.

The interventions also addressed the role of feminist diplomacy in achieving parity and promoting women's access to diplomatic decision-making positions, emphasizing the importance of the efforts made by women's associations in activating the principle of parity within the framework of parallel diplomacy.

The participants also called for collective reflection on initiatives aimed at promoting feminist diplomacy and enhancing the gender approach, and the need to exchange experiences and best practices among partner legislative institutions.

At the conclusion of this Forum, the participants made recommendations to institutionalize this gathering and make it an annual event to be organized by the member assemblies.

The recommendations also included a call to regulate social media, which have become a breeding ground for cyber violence against women and a platform for exclusionary discourses against women. The participants also called for pursuing the efforts in a participatory manner among the partner legislative institutions to achieve equality and parity.