Address of Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Zaina Idehli, at Seminar on Combatting Violence against Women

Distinguished colleagues,

Distinguished attendees on-site and online,

Your excellencies, the Ambassadors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Preserving a tradition to which the Moroccan Parliament has been accustomed for years in the context of fighting violence against women and girls, the Moroccan Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe organize this seminar as part of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.

First, I welcome you and commend the qualitative partnership between us, funded by the European Union. I would also like to thank the present fellow women parliamentarians from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the distinguished Ambassadors, and respected experts.

Distinguished colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Violence against women and girls is not limited to one country, nor is it limited to a particular culture. However, its magnitude, nature, and the means to curb it differ according to the cultural, social, and economic contexts. Overall, it is not an inevitable fate, but a practice repudiated, shunned, and unacceptable by all civilized laws and legislations.

In addition to the physical and moral damages it causes to its victims, violence against women and girls has a high economic cost, aggravates the burden on public security and judicial services, and requires enormous efforts and expenses when it comes to providing care for the victims, and accompanying socially and psychologically.

Violence against women and girls is, above all, detrimental and harmful to human dignity as it impacts the lives of victims and their entourage and causes family breakdown. Therefore, it violates the natural and fundamental human rights of women.

As preserving human rights is the core of any democratic State, the Constitution of the Kingdom entrenched such rights in more than 30 of its Articles, as well as its preface, which remains an essential part of it, and amongst these rights reside those of women and children.

In the same respect, and as part of the Kingdom’s commitment to international human rights instruments and culture, the Constitution’s drafters ensured that the international instruments ratified by the Kingdom and aligned with the provisions of the Kingdom’s Constitution, laws, and deep-rooted national identity, supersede national laws. Hence, they worked on adapting said laws with the requirements of the relevant international instruments.

This democratic liberal trend that preserves overall human rights encloses the legal legislative and regulatory arsenal adopted in the Kingdom of Morocco to combat, prohibit, and sanction violence against women and girls, which include the Law on fighting human trafficking, the Law defining the conditions of employment of domestic workers, the Law on social care institutions, the Law on the Authority for Parity and the Fight against all Forms of Discrimination, and the Law on the Advisory Council for Family and Children.

The implementation of these laws is reinforced by the work of intersecting institutions and mechanisms of prevention, prohibition, and the fight against violence against women. In this respect, I should recall the vital role of the National Authority to Provide Care for Women Victims of Violence, the National Observatory of Women's Image in Media, which monitors the discourses and signs that demean women's dignity in media, given that it is symbolic violence and offense against them.

Distinguished colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

We cannot talk in the Kingdom of Morocco about combatting violence against women and providing care for its victims without commending the noble, decisive, and vigilant role of civil society bodies in providing accompaniment, counseling, and support, and those who advocate women's rights. In this vein, the role of these institutions complements the part of the State and its institutions in supporting victims of violence.

In the same regard, I do not feel the need to recall the strong commitment of the Moroccan Parliament to the national policies to combat violence against women via legislation, control, public policy evaluation, and defending the accession to the relevant international instruments, in a way that does not contravene the Kingdom’s Constitution, laws, and constants.

In this respect, I should recall the outcomes of the current work of the Working Group in charge of evaluating the implementation of Law 103-13 on combatting violence against women on the basis of Article 70 of the Constitution, which will culminate in a report on the impacts of the implementation of the said Law that entered into force in 2018. This work will indeed identify the strengths and weaknesses of the implementation of this Law and derive the indicators of the violence phenomenon and the impact of this Law on its limitation and repression.

Distinguished colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

We would be delighted with the debate that will take place in this room, and we would be joyous to listen to the interventions of the colleagues and political officers participating online from Paris and Strasbourg, especially the former Minister in the French Government, the dear Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the Head of the France Terre d’Asile NGO, and Ms. Maria Andriani Kostopoulou, the Deputy Chairperson of the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.

I welcome you again and thank you for your presence with us, proof of your commitment to this noble human rights cause.