Morocco moves to ban child maids.

"We aim to create a Morocco that is worthy of its children." - Yasmnia Baddou

As we reported last year, Morocco has been active in the fight against all forms of child labour. For some time concerns have been raised about the number of very young girls being taken from their rural homes and put to work as domestic servants.



Yasmnia Baddou (pictured above), Morocco's secretary of state for family, childhood and the disabled, last year said that the new law she was introducing aimed to "create a Morocco that is worthy of its children" and would focus on "regulating domestic labour and punish all use of little girls as maids."

According to the US rights group Human Rights Watch, Morocco has one of the highest child labour rates in the Middle East and North Africa. This is despite the fact that Moroccan law bans children under 15 from working.

However, a survey carried out by Morocco's employment ministry, the rights group International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and the World Bank, found that some 600,000 children between the ages of seven and 14 work in Morocco - 11 percent of the country's children in that age group.

The Human Rights Watch's report issued in December 2005 said that "girls as young as five work 100 or more hours per week, without rest breaks or days off for as little as six and a half Moroccan dirhams (about 70 US cents) a day. These girls are often exposed to physical and even sexual abuse and denied schooling."

New Initiatives

Morocco has now launched a national program to fight employment of little girls as maids and help them enjoy a better life.

Dubbed Inqad (rescue in Arabic), the programme provides for an array of measures and calls for pooling efforts to reach the goals of the ten-year National Action Plan for the Childhood aiming to eradicate the employment of little girls, through opening new vistas for a better future where they can enjoy all their rights.

Yasmina Baddou said employment of children under the age of 15 decreased from the 2004 level of 600,000 to 177,000, and pointed out that at the heart of the problem was illiteracy, school drop-out, illegal immigration and large network of intermediaries involved in the illegal activities.

Baddou highlighted the efforts made by her department to encourage girls' schooling in rural areas, increase the minimum ages of children's access to employment from 12 to 15 years, prohibit the use of children under the age of 18 to carry out dangerous work and consolidate coercive laws.

Inqad, which was devised by the State secretariat in charge of Family, Childhood and the Disabled, also aims at re-integrating these domestic servants into society.

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