Morocco saw an alarming rate of child sexual abuse in 2022, El Hassan Daki, the prosecutor general of the King at the Court of Cassation and president of the Public Prosecution Office.
An alarming average of 9 cases of child sexual abuse were recorded every day.
According to Daki, prosecutors documented a total of 3,295 cases of child sexual assault in 2022. This statistic accounts for over 41% of all violent crimes committed against children in Morocco.
In response, the Public Prosecutor’s Office issued directives to court prosecutors and implemented measures to enhance the legal and judicial protection of children, aiming to combat all forms of violence, exploitation, and abuse, stressing the need for strict legislation with severe penalties against these criminals to prevent them from evading justice.
To bolster these efforts, the Presidency of the Public Prosecution proactively disseminated directives through periodic publications to public prosecutor’s offices across the Kingdom.
These directives stressed the imperative of enhancing legal protections for children, preventing violence, exploitation, and abuse, and ensuring strict enforcement of laws against those found guilty of such heinous crimes.
Morocco’s commitment to safeguarding children’s rights is unequivocal, as evidenced by the nation’s ratification of various international conventions and instruments, including the International Convention on the Rights of the Child and its two Additional Protocols.
Additionally, Morocco is actively engaged in the Budapest European Convention on Combating Cybercrime and its First Additional Protocol to protect children from sexual exploitation in pornography.
Morocco initiated the signing of the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in 2013, marking a crucial building block in the global effort to combat child abuse effectively.