Morocco: Poster: Promoting Violence against Women Legislation in Morocco
Source:
Global Rights Morocco The Global Rights Morocco field office, in collaboration with NGO partners, announces the launch of a legislative advocacy campaign including a poster "Penalisation, Protection, Zero Tolerance: Women demand a law against violence".
March 11, 2008 (Rabat). The Global Rights Morocco field office, in collaboration with NGO partners from diverse regions across the country, announces the launch of a legislative advocacy campaign through two newly developed tools – our poster Penalisation, Protection, Zero Tolerance: Women demand a law against violence as well as an accompanying issue paper.
Designed to serve as a practical tool for local NGOs in their advocacy efforts for women’s rights in Morocco, the poster was elaborated through a participatory grassroots process and illustrates twelve demands for comprehensive violence against women legislation, with simplified texts in French, Arabic and Tifinagh. The issue paper explains the justification for each proposal, provides statistics and testimonials, and presents concrete legislative examples such as those contained in the Framework for model legislation on domestic violence elaborated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences.
Following a workshop organized by Global Rights in September, our 10 partner NGOs collaborated with 39 additional local associations to organize 11 workshops to train 94 of their members as community consultations facilitators. They then held 161 community consultations sessions in 35 cities, towns and rural villages with 1836 women to solicit their priorities and suggestions for national violence against women legislation. Local artists worked with the women to create pictures illustrating their demands, which Global Rights used to create the poster and accompanying issue paper.
The twelve themes identified by the women participants for both civil and penal legislative reforms are: Order violent offenders out of the family home; No to mediation in domestic violence cases; Guarantee financial support during domestic violence cases; Guarantee the protection of victims of violence through protection orders against offenders; Require police to prepare a written report at all suspected scenes of domestic violence; Increase penalties for domestic violence; Criminalize marital rape; Criminalize all forms of sexual harassment; Prosecute domestic violence offenders without the need for witnesses; Increase police powers to intervene immediately in domestic violence cases; Punish low level misdemeanors in domestic violence cases; Increase penalties for repeated acts of violence.
Global Rights’ local NGO partners in this initiative are: Association Amal pour la femme et le développement (El Hajeb), Association el Amane pour le développement de la femme (Marrakech), Association Tawaza pour le plaidoyer de la femme (Tétouan), Association de Développement de la vallée du Dra (Zagora), Tafiil Moubadarat (Taza), Association Tafoukt Souss pour le développement de la femme (Agadir), Association des Jeunes Avocats (Khemisset), Espace Oasis Tafilalt pour le développement (Rissani), Association Bades d’animation sociale et économique (El Hoceima) and the Réseau Amazigh pour la citoyenneté.
In coming weeks, Global Rights and our partners will distribute 2000 copies of the poster and issue paper across the country. As part of this campaign, the 10 NGO partners are organizing town hall meetings in their communities with decision-makers, parliamentarians, local authorities, hospital personnel and justice system representatives to present the poster and discuss the issue paper.
This project was made possible through the generous support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rabat and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
To request copies of the poster and issue paper, please contact Global Rights in Morocco at 212.37.66.04.10 or by e-mail at wrapmorocco@globalrights.ma
