Marrakech – Morocco treats the management of straits as a responsibility rather than a property, Foreign Affairs Minister Nasser Bourita told a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, calling for an international code of conduct for the countries that border these maritime passages.
Bourita spoke at an Arria-formula meeting organized by Bahrain under the theme “Safe Seas, Shared Security: Protecting Freedom of Navigation in an Evolving Security Environment.”
Morocco is not only a coastal state, he noted, but a country carrying direct responsibility for the management and security of the Strait of Gibraltar, one of the world’s most important maritime routes.
Nearly 100,000 ships transit the strait each year, about 300 a day, or one every five minutes. Traffic through Gibraltar runs five times heavier than the Suez Canal, Bourita argued, eleven times heavier than the Panama Canal, and nearly three times more intense than the Strait of Hormuz.
Morocco does not view its geographic position as a privilege or a tool for pressure and blackmail, he noted, but as an international responsibility and a lever for cooperation, stability, and development.
On that basis, Bourita announced Morocco’s call to open a reflection on an international code of conduct for freedom of navigation. International waterways, he argued, must remain open, safe, and predictable.
He proposed that Morocco host, in coordination with Bahrain, an international forum to reinforce commitment to international law and end the polarization between those who claim ownership of strategic passages and those who exploit them for blackmail.
Seas and oceans form an essential but fragile global infrastructure, Bourita warned, which makes them a vulnerable target for greed and malicious designs.
The intervention came during the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, where Bourita held several other engagements. He met his Bahraini counterpart, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, and the two agreed to coordinate positions within international bodies.
He also co-chaired, alongside UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman, a world conference against hate speech through interreligious and intercultural dialogue, an initiative Morocco co-organized with the UN.
The focus on Gibraltar recalled a scenario raised at the same headquarters last May. US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz drew a pointed comparison between Hormuz and Gibraltar to condemn Iran’s mining and tolling operations in the Gulf corridor.
“Imagine if you had two countries, hypothetically like Spain and Morocco, have some type of dispute, and then throw sea mines into the Strait of Gibraltar and then start trying to charge shipping to pass through in a cynical bid for leverage,” Waltz told reporters.
He described that hypothetical as immoral, illegal under international law, and a form of collective punishment against the entire world.
