Mohamed VI gives the Government six months to draft a new Family Code

2023-09-26 15:59:21

MADRID, 26 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, has entrusted the Government with drafting the new Family Code that the monarch promised more than a year ago and has asked that this reform be on his table “within a maximum period of six months”, in such a way so that the future bill can be drafted and subsequently put to a vote in Parliament.

In said speech, the king called for adapting the Family Code, known by the term ‘Mudawana’, to the 2011 Constitution, among other things to promote gender equality. However, he already advanced then that they would take into account ‘sharia’ or Islamic law and the “specificities” of Moroccan society: “I am not going to make lawful what God prohibited.”

Mohamed VI has now sent a letter to the Prime Minister, Aziz Ajanuch, to “concrete” his request and reflect his interest in continuing to advance in “issues of women and the family in general”, according to a message from the Royal Family collected by the official MAP news agency.

The king entrusts the preparation of this “important reform” to the Ministry of Justice, the Superior Council of the Judiciary and the Prosecutor’s Office, “taking into account the centrality of the legal and judicial dimensions of this issue”, and has urged these institutions to study possible proposals from civil society.

The note does not include express requests from the monarch, so it remains to be seen to what extent the reform in certain cases will include improvements in social rights, for example with some type of gesture towards extramarital relations, historically persecuted in Morocco.