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By Hajare El Khaldi
Rabat – Morocco will benefit from an EUR 3.35 million project that aims to tighten legislation on cybercrime in the European Union’s “Southern Neighborhood.”
This initiative is a joint project between the European Union and the Council on Cooperation Against Cybercrime, financed under the European Neighborhood Instrument that started on July 1, 2017.
Following an eight-month inception phase, a launching conference was held in Tunisia on March 21-23, with the participation of several countries, including Morocco and the other priority countries for the project: Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon.
The three-year project aims to tackle the issue of cybercrime through five key areas: legislation, specialized services, and inter-agency services, including public-private cooperation, judicial training, international cooperation, and strategic prioritization of cybercrime and electronic evidence.
The Budapest Convention of 2001, also known as the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe, serves as a guideline for the Cybersouth Project and for any country hoping to develop a comprehensive national legislation against cybercrime.
By its 15th anniversary in 2016, 50 states had become party to the convention: several European countries, Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Sri Lanka, and the USA; another 17 counties, including Morocco, became signatories.
According to a 2015 Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) report, Moroccan Cybercrime Services, working under the General Directorate of National Security, identified 112 cases of cybercrime in 2011, over 26 of which were crimes against personhood, including sexual harassment.
“Despite the increasing number of sexual harassment cases in cyberspace, and Morocco’s avowed commitments at the international level, the government’s legislative agenda does not address sexual harassment in cyberspaces sufficiently. NGOs also tend to concentrate their efforts exclusively on sexual harassment offline,” read the report.
