On Thursday, NGO Mobilising for Rights Associates (MRA) held a webinar to discuss research findings on the violence against women under the theme, “Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Morocco.”
The online meeting featured Aicha Sakmassi, executive director of the association Moroccan Women’s Voices; Saida Kouzzi, a founding partner in Mobilising for Rights Associates NGO; Hasna Allali, president of Amal Association for Women and Development; and Amal El Azzouzi, president of association Tafiil Moubadarat, meaning Activating Initiatives.
Morocco World News also attended the meeting.
According to Amal El Azzouzi, some of the central objectives of the research is to spread awareness regarding violence against women in Morocco and make the government more responsive to the issue of violence against women.
There were 1,213 female participants in the study who had suffered from domestic violence. Researchers interviewed the women to learn of their specific stories of domestic abuse and how they dealt with it.
Read also: El Othmani: Moroccans Must Collectively End Violence Against Women
The majority of aggressors, according to the research, are either husbands, boyfriends, or fiances. Sometimes even the family of the husband, often the mother and sister partake in these atrocities, Hasnae Allali said.
Violence against women can range from rape , forced marriage, the relinquishment of the women’s property, forceful appropriation of their money, and pressure in obtaining their consent for the husband to have multiple wives.
“There is an example,” Allali added “of a married woman with four children who suffered from different kinds of violence from her husband to force her to file for divorce and waive her financial rights, such as alimony.”
The study highlights that women suffer from physical, psychological, and sexual violence.
When it comes to reporting the violence to authorities, women can report violence on the same day, on the following days, or after a few weeks.
However, there are women who do not report the violence for many reasons.
These reasons include not receiving necessary protection from the authorities, a lack of convictions for aggressors, that their children will not have access to their father, a lack of financial support, or negative view from their community after the conflict becomes public knowledge.
In order to encourage women in Morocco to report domestic violence, we should as a community push authorities to give more importance to the issue of violence against women, Saida Kouzzi concluded.
According to a study made in September 2020 by HCP, at least 5.3 million Moroccan women have suffered from violence.However, women in Morocco are willing to fight for their rights in order to live a life free from violence.
