“In Morocco everyone looks at you badly when you know you are a single mother,” Zineb Musita (fictional name), 19, with an almost childish smile attenuated by the metallic dental concealer. He has just given birth just over a month ago to a baby from which he takes care of in the reception home of the INSAF Association (National Institution of Solidarity with Women) in Casablanca, next to about twenty children without a father, born of mothers repudiated by their relatives. The reform of the mudawana or family code – presented in December to King Mohamed VI and the Government, and still pending to be sent to Parliament – will not allow, as feminist organizations ask, to claim from the biological parent the paternal surname or the right From the child to food and inheritance. The Council of Ulemes, the highest religious authority consulted by the monarch as a “Commander of the believers”, has settled the issue by decreeing that DNA tests to determine paternity are “contrary to the Sharía (Islamic Law)”.
“A relative who lodged me at home and the owner of a floor that I shared later with other girls threw me into the street when they saw that my belly increased in size,” recalls Zineb sadly her tribulations in Casablanca, where she moved after leaving His people in the interior of the country to escape social pressure and talk. “I was able to keep keeping me,” he said, “thanks to the fact that I kept my work in a restaurant because I wore very wide clothes that hid my pregnancy.”
Despite the lack of official data, NGOs that host single mothers estimate that about 50,000 cases in Morocco are recorded every year: 7% of births. State orphanages (with more than 30,000 admitted, according to the Maroc Coeur association) are the most common destination of their children. Baby abandonment in housing portals or garbage containers are counted by dozens in large cities such as Casablanca.
“I told my sister, but my father still doesn’t know he was a grandfather. I am afraid that I find out that I have had a child without being married, ”confesses Zineb, who now tries to reorganize his life. He has begun to attend the work training workshops offered by the INSAF facilities (clothing, kitchen or hairdressing) while his son remains in the care of a nursery in the same center.
“In 25 years of existence we have welcomed about 15,000 women. Now we serve a thousand a year, but much more social help is needed, ”says Amina Jalid, 58, general secretary of the INSAF, at the headquarters of the Association, a building that rises between housing blocks in a neighborhood Popular Moroccan economic capital. “Unfortunately, Morocco will not have a legal text that forces a man to undergo a DNA test to determine fatherhood. The ulemas have vetoed him by claiming that he opposes the religious tradition and undermines the foundations of the family, ”laments Jalid.
Against what happened decades with the children “born outside the conjugal bed”, they already have a paternal surname (fictional, although approved by the administration) and identity documents, but Jalid warns that they remain “children stigmatized in A country that aspires to modernity, and that they will not have the same rights as citizens in the future. ”
Although it serves to demonstrate biological paternity, the DNA test does not guarantee in Morocco the obtaining of paternal affiliation to the children of single mothers, on equal rights with those born in the marriage. The Government has announced after the presentation of the reform of the mudawana that will ensure the assistance of parents to the children, but has not yet specified how.
In the conservative Moroccan justice, the judges reject DNA evidence to recognize paternity. The only precedent in the opposite direction dates from 2017, when a Tangier court established a “biological bond” between a man and a girl born out of marriage after a genetic study was carried out and condemned him to compensate the little girl with 100,000 dirhams (9,600 euros), the equivalent of 2.7 annuities of the Moroccan minimum wage. The higher courts, however, did not take a judicial resolution that had been held as an advance for civil society.
The young Zineb has not tended to resort to the DNA test so that her son has been recognized by the 21 -year -old father. “We had a courtship for more than a year and I got pregnant the first time we had sex; It emerged suddenly and we didn’t take precautions… ”, recalls. “At first I considered raising the child alone, but he has come to visit me and assumed paternity. He has also found a fixed job and we are going to marry, “he says,” although we will stay here, in Casablanca, neither of us want to return to the town. “
The head of Social Development of the INSAF, Saadi El Alaui, 26, formed in Spanish universities, explains that the association is financed with public subsidies from Morocco and the European Union, as well as with donations of international NGOs, such as Oxfam or Oxfam United Hands. The INSAF takes care of the mother from before birth for at least six months and assumes the expenses generated by the son for two years, although he continues to follow up later.
Second Reform of the Family Code
The second reform of the mudawana, after the one approved in 2004 at the beginning of the reign of Mohamed VI, tries to overcome the pitfalls of the application of Sharía as a legal source, as opposed to the rights recognized in the Constitution of 2011 and the international treaties that They link Morocco. The Koranic tradition of polygamy is maintained, but it is in fact limited to authorizing that the woman prohibits the husband in the marriage contract marrying a second wife. In the case of hereditary succession by agnation (which gives preference to the male), parents can agree on life successions to prevent uncles or cousins from depriving their daughters of family assets.
For the recognition of the children of single mothers, legal solutions are yet to see. Minister of Family between 2007 and 2011 for the Party of Progress and Socialism, Nuzha Skali, 73, declares himself against the exclusion of the DNA exam as a paternity test. “It serves the recognition of rights that protect those born outside the marriage collected in the Constitution, which declare the equality of all children whatever their affiliation,” he says. “We must still wait to know the text presented by the Government in Parliament after the veto to the DNA tests of the ulemas,” clarifies this feminist veteran, “but that parents limit themselves to taking care of the extramarital children not It is the solution. It is necessary to recognize your right to have a family. ”
Amina Jalid, general secretary of the INSAF, argues that “being a single mother in Morocco, where there are no birth control policies and abortion is penalized, is a condemnation of suffering a life of discrimination.” “When the family finds out that the daughter is pregnant, the future mother is expelled without contemplation from home,” he warns, “and many go with it and have to sleep on the street or at the train stations or buses” . “The reform announced and pending approval by Parliament is not what we expected,” he concludes. “We need much more, including the right to DNA test.”
Paradoxes of genetic exams
In Morocco, DNA test is usually used in police and judicial investigations. It can serve to discover the author of a violation, but in no case serves to attribute legal paternity. The paradox is given that the same man can resort to the examination of genetic samples in order to rule extramarital relationships.
Article 32 of the Moroccan Constitution obliges the State to guarantee “equality in legal protection and social consideration to all children, regardless of their family situation.” Article 7 of the Convention related to the Rights of the Child, ratified by Morocco, guarantees the right to have surnames since children are cared for by their parents.
There are several voices that in Morocco contradict the opinion of the ulemas. The Economic and Social Council, an official institution, has expressly requested that the right to DNA test is recognized as “scientific element to determine paternity.”
The alliance of associations in defense of the rights of single mothers and their children, of which the INSAF is part with a dozen NGO Perception of single mothers as “eternal sinners.” “The refusal to integrate genetic exams as a test of affiliation constitutes a denial of the rights of children born outside of marriage,” the NGOs refute the doctors of the Sharía, while claiming that DNA tests are mandatory in case of litigation
