Rabat – Mohammed V University will host a forum on women’s access to justice in the Maghreb between June 20 and 22, organized by ARPA International, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and Morocco’s National Council for Human Rights (CNDH).
Held under the title “Women’s Access to Justice in the Maghreb: Case Study of Morocco,” the forum will bring together over 50 sub-regional women leaders from civil society organizations to create and implement “tangible action plans” to enhance women’s access to justice in the country.
‘A forum to empower’
Understanding the legal needs of women and their experiences will be a cornerstone of the forum as it will provide “vital insights” to inform policy making and enforcement of justice in the future.
The two main objectives of the forum are to empower women’s civil society organizations to advance access to justice for women, and building “strategic and sustainable” multidisciplinary partnerships.
In addition to exploring existing challenges and potential remedies to gender injustice, the organizers intend to implement a continuous “online community of practice” after the forum to continue exchanging experiences and solutions.
The organizers also aim to form national follow-up committees in several Maghreb countries to keep publishing research dealing with the issue and holding similar events.
Taking place over three days at Mohammed V University in Rabat, the workshop will include several keynote panels dealing with judicial inequality and women’s rights in general, as well as working sessions aiming to produce concrete recommendations to remedy the problems.
Existing challenges
A press release by the organizers notes that while reliable access to judicial services in the Maghreb has always been lacking, patriarchal societal and institutional barriers mean women are the most vulnerable — and disproportionately affected — populations.
With its reduction of freedom of movement for women and digitalization of the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic made access to legal services even harder, especially for poorer women or those from rural areas.
A history of institutional disadvantages such as lack of access to education and employment opportunities has historically made an already complex system to navigate much less accessible to women, who might often be in need of such services.
Other issues also lie in the availability of the legal services themselves and the inequalities present in the administration of justice itself.
According to the forum’s organizers, the legal system has to be amended in a way to provide preventative remedies and weed out discriminatory practices that could end up inadvertently harming women.
And while Morocco’s constitution enshrines the right to equal access to justice and the country’s courts, the organizers note that in practice there are still a lot of shortcomings in the system.
Just recently, on Mother’s Day, the issue of gender inequality in the justice system came into the spotlight after actress Fati Jamali took to Instagram to lament not having the same legal rights as her ex-husband on Instagram.
Jamali decried the superficial celebrations of mother’s and Women’s Day, saying that women continue to face systemic obstacles when it comes to rights and dignity in the real world.
She notably recounted how, despite being a more invested parent than her ex-husband, she needed his permission to obtain legal papers — such as an identity card and passport — for their son. Jamali said, tellingly, “I do not want to celebrate mother’s day, I want to celebrate mother’s rights.”.
Read also: Mother’s Day: Moroccan Mothers Share Experiences with Sexist Laws
