The committee tasked with examining the Family Code proceeded with its meetings with official institutions whose operations are closely linked to family matters.
The meetings featured judges, academic researchers, and other practitioners in the field of the Family Code, as well as human rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights representatives.
The committee received on Thursday, the “Women’s Coordination for Comprehensive and Profound Change of the Family Code,” which presented its demands on several issues that it seeks to change in this legal text, most notably inheritance, marriage, divorce, legal guardianship, custody, alimony, and proof of lineage.
In this context, Samira Mohya, a member of the Women’s Coordination for Comprehensive and Deep Change of the Family Code, said “We demand a code based on equality and non-discrimination because of gender and religion, achieving justice and fairness, and that it exceeds all discriminatory requirements that humiliate women and perpetuate and consolidate their inferiority through a set of requirements.”
Mohya told MoroccoLatestNews AR that among the demands made by the coordination committee during the closed meeting were the total elimination of polygamy and minor marriage, as well as the idea that dowries should not be the foundation of marriage contracts or a requirement for their validity.
Instead, they should fall under the category of gifts given and received between spouses. Other demands included those related to alimony and legal guardianship, which the coordination cited as examples of legal discrimination and violence in the current text, discussing joint alimony between spouses during marriage and taking into account domestic work and caregiving as a means of contributing to alimony and the accumulation of family wealth.
Mohya also raised the issue of “guardianship in which children’s rights and women’s efforts are lost,” noting that “the separation between legal guardianship and custody constitutes obstacles for women in raising their children due to their financial and administrative affairs and the travel of the child in custody.”
The advocate calls for “joint guardianship between the spouses, and not separating guardianship from custody, but rather whoever has the latter has the right to the former, and joint custody between the spouses or one following the best interest of the child.”
She also discussed the need to uphold the equality of men and women following a divorce, the idea that marriage should not be used as a justification for denying women the right to custody, and the idea that there should be no distinction made between biological parents and their lineage, as lineage is a child’s right regardless of the circumstances surrounding their birth, and the use of genetic expertise in all paternity claims as a means of establishing paternity.
Regarding inheritance issues, Mohya calls for an equal application system, without discrimination based on gender or religion.