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When Moroccan human rights expert Rabéa Naciri attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, she knew it was a turning point for women’s rights. “I was inspired by the international momentum that had been set in motion since the Nairobi conference,” she said.
A series of global conferences, meetings and feminist activism grew the momentum leading up to the Beijing conference and the international agreement endorsed there by 189 governments and thousands of civil society representatives – the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Naciri recalls how feminist activists from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia came together as a collective to advocate for family law reforms in the country and globally. For them, the conference in Beijing was a milestone in their pursuit of equality, rights, and justice.
“It brought valuable lessons, broadened alliances and strengthened solidarities,” she shares.
“The adoption [of the Platform for Action] represented a turning point, as it was accompanied by an actionable framework and direct accountability for States, requiring them to develop and implement national action plans.”
National Action Plans hold the promise of change through resource allocation, programmes and policies. For Morocco, the advocacy and commitments made at the 1995 conference in Beijing culminated into the historic reform of its family law.
In 2004, the new Family Code of Morocco was officially announced by the government and put into effect. It included a number of progressive measures for gender equality, such as raising the age of marriage to 18 years for both men and women, criminalizing domestic violence, equal custody rights for men and women, and ending the guardianship of women by male members of the family.
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