Moroccan Women

In March 2012, a 15-year- old teenager named Amina killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist. In Morocco, according to article 475 of the Family Code, rapists can avoid prison if they marry their victim. Amina's suicide restarted the debate over the repeal of this law. In your opinion, did this story make a difference in the public opinion in Morocco?

Unfortunately, these types of stories are common in Morocco and some people still think this law is good to recover the honor of the victims and of their families. Some even tried to minimize the story by saying that Amina was dating her rapist and that it was therefore not really rape...

Besides, the “buzz” around the Amina case especially happened on the internet and in the foreign press. Moroccan television barely talked about it, so many Moroccans did not have access to proper information on this story. But for people like me, who followed this affair very closely, the fact that the government decided to head towards a repeal of the law 475 after the scandal around Amina's suicide is a strong sign. It makes us realize that it is possible to change things and that the current Islamist government is a bit less hermetic than the previous ones. But there is still work to do to stop stories like this to happen again.

The Family Code was re-examined in 2004 by the Moroccan Parliament. Do you think it went far enough?

It changed certain things but not enough. Besides, even if some laws are very good in it, the fact that they are often not implemented is a huge issue. In Morocco, the law enforcement system is weak. Even if we had an unerring law, if the police and the justice didn’t follow it, it would be pointless. The Family Code was not perfect in 2004, but the fact that it was re-examined was a sign of hope. It took a long time to have it done and the work was a great effort on many levels. But today it is already obsolete.

Did the “February 20” protest movement of 2011 help women's condition in Morocco?

Not really, but it was the same in the Arab countries were the Arab Spring happened. I have an interesting story about that. A young journalist I know followed protesters of the February 20 movement. She saw that when the female members of the movement insinuated to other protesters that they were eager to have more freedom, they would be looked down on and called names. It showed that things were not changing.

The mistake these women and the other women from the Arab Spring protests made was to think that the fact that the people was asking for more democracy necessarily implied that women's rights would be taken into consideration. It was not the case. They did not speak out from the start, they did not say their demands right at the beginning. They should have said: “If you want us to fight with you, this is what we want at the end of this”. Instead, they fought for democracy but their claims were not heard. With “Qhandisha”, I wanted to offset the weakness of the feminist section of the February 20 movement. But this only concerns me, not all the women who write for the website agree with that or are as politicized as I am.

Do you have other projects linked to “Quandisha?"

I would always want to keep the collaborative side of the webzine but my dream would also be to have a small editorial board of journalists who would go in the field to get news. It would boost the webzine even more. I am also thinking about doing awareness campaigns, with a caravan for instance that would go in small villages to alert women on contraception or sexually transmitted diseases.

On Moroccan television, movies where women accept happily their husband's polygamy or fall in love with their rapist are still being broadcast today. There is still a lot of work to do. I have also been approached by sponsors and, instead of having an ad on the website, it would be interesting to have them engaging themselves in causes such as women emancipation or young girls’ literacy. We also want to create a web radio where we would help Moroccan women in their daily life and give them hope and strength.