On October 10, the Tangiers Court of Cassation overturned the 2019 conviction of a man for raping his wife, which had been hailed as Morocco’s first ruling to explicitly criminalize marital rape. By referring the case back to the Tangiers Appeals Court, which had sentenced the man to two years imprisonment and ordered him to pay a fine and compensation to the victim, the Cassation Court has effectively annulled a critical legal precedent criminalizing marital rape, setting back the clock on advancing women’s rights in Morocco.
Morocco’s penal code and other legislation do not explicitly criminalize marital rape. While a 2018 law on violence against women criminalized some forms of domestic violence, established prevention measures, and provided new protections for survivors, it did not explicitly criminalize rape within marriage and created new gaps and barriers for survivors to access promised protections. The law does not define domestic violence and fails to specify the obligations of police, prosecutors, and investigative judges in domestic violence cases.
Moroccan legislation defines rape as an act by “a man who has sexual relations with a woman against her will.” Article 486 of the penal code stipulates prison terms of five to ten years for rape, unless the victim is a minor under the age of 18, a person with a disability, or a pregnant woman, in which case the penalty is between 10 to 20 years imprisonment.
The United Nations considers Morocco’s position on marital rape to be “ambiguous,” as it is sometimes prosecuted under rape or other laws but is not in itself criminalized. Morocco has ratified the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, which specifically includes marital rape as a form of violence against women. The UN recommends national laws explicitly state that sexual violence against an intimate partner, otherwise known as marital rape, are considered a form of domestic violence.
To meaningfully protect women’s rights, Moroccan authorities should make long overdue legal amendments to explicitly criminalize sexual assault within marriage, including marital rape.
