Virtual Magazine of Morocco on the Web
Morocco Week in Review 
October 31, 2009

Moroccan Hefla to Raise Funds for Fruit Tree Planting in Rural Morocco.
28-10-2009 New York, NY

The Board of Directors of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) will host its fifth annual New York City reception ¨C a Moroccan hefla ¨C on the evening of Friday, November 6th (7pm-10pm) at the American Institute of Architects New York. Approximately 150 guests, including Moroccan expatriates, returned Peace Corps Volunteers, politicians, business leaders, and academicians, will take part in the evening¡¯s festivities that include Moroccan hors d¡¯oeuvres, a traditional tea pouring ceremony, henna artists, and music.

The event will raise funds for fruit tree planting with rural Moroccan communities, including 20,000 walnut and cherry tree saplings for the Kate Jeans-Gail Tree Nursery Memorial. Since 2003, HAF has planted nearly 150,000 fruit trees, benefitting 20,000 rural people, with the goal of planting one million trees throughout Morocco. Individual tickets are being sold for $100, $75, and $50 ¨C $1 plants one sapling in a community tree nursery. Tickets can be purchased at http://moroccanhefla.eventbrite.com.

Honorary Event Chairs include H.R.H. Princess Lalla Meryem ¡ñ Aicha Afifi, Former Deputy Chief of Mission of the Moroccan Embassy, Washington DC ¡ñ Carol Bellamy, Former Director of Peace Corps ¡ñ John Entelis, PhD, Director of the Middle East Studies Program, Fordham University ¡ñ Madison Jones, Former Director of Peace Corps Morocco ¡ñ Ambassador Samuel L. Kaplan, US Ambassador to Morocco and Mrs. Sylvia C. Kaplan ¡ñ Mohamed Karmoune, Consul General for the Consulate of the Kingdom of Morocco in New York ¡ñ James Miller, PhD, President of the American Institute of Maghrib Studies ¡ñ Darcy Neill, Former Director of Peace Corps Morocco ¡ñ Jody Olsen, PhD, Former Deputy Director of Peace Corps ¡ñ Driss Ouaouicha, PhD, President of Al Akhawayn University ¡ñ Kevin Quigley, PhD, President of the National Peace Corps Association ¡ñ Tim Resch, President of Friends of Morocco ¡ñ Ambassador Frederick Vreeland, Former US Ambassador to Morocco.
http://www.albawaba.com/en/countries/Morocco/256070
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Morocco sets sights on poverty reduction.
By Siham Ali – 29/10/09

Despite official data showing a dip in the nation's poverty rate, Morocco has announced a new strategic framework to tackle the problem. Morocco is developing a new strategic framework to fight poverty, which will place top priority on addressing the vulnerabilities that lead families into destitution.

"There was a need to bring all governmental and non-governmental initiatives together to fight poverty, given the necessity of coordinating all activities, both in terms of financial and human resources," said Minister of Social Development Nouzha Skelli, as her office unveiled the plan on October 22nd in Rabat.

The ministry aims to streamline the efforts being made across all ministerial departments to reduce poverty levels in Morocco, which official data show as having dropped from 14.5% in 1998 to 9% this year.

Skelli said the strategy, which is being worked out in conjunction with the UNDP and Morocco's civil society, will develop pilot projects in certain localities before a wider roll-out. "A number of aspects need to be considered in the fight against poverty, including health, the environment and basic infrastructure," said the minister.

The strategic framework's first aim is to prevent more families from becoming poverty-stricken by addressing their vulnerability. The second aim is to set up mechanisms to allow poor families to escape poverty by developing their skills and stimulating their own initiatives. There are also plans to facilitate access to resources, set up social safety nets, create a better social assistance system, and help guarantee appropriate minimum living standards for the most needy.

Adib Nouâma, a regional advisor dealing with social statistics, said the framework would help uncover efficient mechanisms for coordinating action among the different departments, and thus generate better results.

According to the social development ministry, Morocco's National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) represents the most general strategy into which any national strategy to combat poverty should fit. For her part, INDH co-ordinator Nadira Guermai called for the continuation of ongoing efforts to achieve the targets already established for the fight against poverty. "More than 18,700 projects have been launched under the INDH since 2005, benefiting more than 4 million vulnerable people in Morocco," she said.

The UNDP representative in Morocco, Aliaa Dali, said the most important thing was the work on the ground, and that Morocco has a good track record when it comes to the INDH. "Continuous efforts are needed to evaluate those programmes which have been set up, and to overcome the difficulties which stand in the way of success for the strategy and INDH projects, since difficulties have been reported about the sustainability of some projects," said Skelli.
http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2009/10/29/feature-02
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Opportunities for Decentralization in Morocco.
by Yossef Ben-Meir / October 30th, 2009

King Mohammed VI of Morocco will deliver a highly anticipated speech this November 6th –the anniversary of the Green March of 1975 when 350,000 unarmed Moroccans crossed into the Western Sahara. On this same occasion last year, Morocco’s King presented his “roadmap” to decentralize “all parts of the Kingdom, especially the Moroccan Sahara region” and “usher in a complete change from rigid centralized management.” The roadmap expands upon the Kingdom’s 2007 proposal to the United Nations Security Council for a final settlement of the Western Saharan conflict. Morocco proposes to build the political, economic, and social autonomy of the Western Sahara (and now the whole of the country) within overall Moroccan sovereignty.

How the monarch now follows through on decentralization will greatly determine to the extent he is able to achieve his most cherished goals: sustainable socio-economic development of the Kingdom achieved through participatory democracy; and a resolution of the Western Saharan conflict by way of meeting the self-determined needs of people in the region as part of the Kingdom.

There are four major paths to a nation’s decentralization that have been applied around the world. Morocco’s decentralization roadmap is highly innovative in that it combines three of the four approaches. The three arrangements incorporated in Morocco’s plan are devolution, deconcentration, and delegation, or what the King often refers to as the participatory democratic method (Morocco’s roadmap does not incorporate privatization, and instead intends to use public funds to implement the plan).

In the past, decentralization in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Canada, and China applied more heavily the devolution model, which emphasizes greater authority and capacities among local government. In Tanzania, under the still revered President Julius Nyerere, delegation occurred in which groups of people living as a community exercised self-government in all matters which concerned their own affairs. And India and Sri Lanka utilized deconcentration, whereby government and community groups collaborate to promote development.

Morocco’s incorporation of the three approaches would create a progressive system whereby provincial and local government, and communities and their organizations, exercise decision-making authority, newly built skills, and other capacities, including financial, to carry out greater developmental responsibilities. Furthermore, His Majesty emphasizes that ultimate determination of specific kinds of projects should rest with local communities, or the beneficiary groups. Local beneficiaries are the “engine and objective” and are to “take charge” of programs, with government and civil support.

The King of Morocco should now use his upcoming November 6th speech to build on the existing roadmap by offering more specifics on the reforms and initiatives that will carry out decentralization. Here are some suggestions:

First, local civil and government technicians (across Moroccan ministries) require training in facilitating participatory methods that assist communities in analyzing their challenges and determining project solutions (in job creation, clean drinking water, school construction, etc.). This necessitates, for example, new development studies and training programs at universities (including here at Morocco’s flagship Al Akhawayn University), well beyond the few recently created in the country. Morocco’s goal to train 10,000 new social workers and the same number of engineers per year should include in their curriculum building skills in managing project development and participatory democracy. Since universities play an indispensable role toward decentralization, the King ought to announce his intention to establish the first university in Western Sahara.

Second, His Majesty should take this opportunity to highlight important lessons from Morocco’s National Initiative for Human Development and suggest how they may guide the implementation of decentralization. Scores of Moroccans benefitted from the Initiative, and it raised the public’s consciousness about sustainable development, creating fertile ground for decentralization. However, as the King himself suggested, the Initiative has been too centrally managed, which contradicts its original intention of promoting local self-reliance. Far more non-government facilitators of community planning of Initiative projects are needed. The Ministry of Interior, charged with internal national security, has been in too much control and results unfortunately show. Therefore, although the King’s ongoing role in the decentralization process is essential, central government should not be the primary caretaker, but rather a new “third-party” agency inside the royal cabinet is probably necessary.

Finally, there are too many cases where local officials of the Ministry of Interior have stirred distrust and division, particularly in rural areas where most of Morocco’s poverty exists, impeding collaborative development. Decentralization should reform their traditional functions, and subsume them to local Communes, which are governed by elected representatives directly involved in meeting human needs. Reforming the Ministry of Interior is inevitable if genuine decentralization is to occur, and the King now stating so will increase public awareness and confidence. After all, as he recognizes, it is the people, minimally encumbered, who are to grab hold of their own development.
Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a professor of sociology at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, and also president of the High Atlas Foundation, a non-government organization that promotes rural community development in Morocco. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect those of Al Akhawayn University and the High Atlas Foundation. Read other articles by Yossef.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/opportunities-for-decentralization-in-morocco/
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Flawed French handicaps young Moroccan job-seekers.
By Siham Ali 2009-10-27

Because many employers are looking for candidates with strong skills in spoken and written French, young Moroccans with limited language abilities are having difficulty finding work. Young graduates who lack solid French-language skills are finding the Moroccan job market hard to navigate, as French still plays a critical role in business and administration.

The problem stems from ongoing efforts to standardise Arabic-language instruction that began in the 1980s, according to experts in the field. These "Arabisation" efforts decreased the emphasis on learning French.

Amine K. graduated with a business degree, but has struggled to find work for two years because most of the available jobs require him to speak and write French. "I understand the language very well, and when I was at school, several subjects were taught in French. But my spoken and written French skills aren't great," said the job-hunter.

Amel, a young graduate in business management, is in the same boat. She acquired considerable technical skills at a public university, but ran into difficulties when looking for a job. "I'm always told that I have to have a perfect command of French [to be considered for the position]," she said. "I'm currently attending special classes so that I can get a job and put my two years of unemployment behind me. I also need to improve my knowledge of English, because that's a great asset."

Hicham Bajidi, a human resources manager who works for a company in Rabat, said that finding young people who are fluent in French is hard these days. "There are plenty of young graduates who are competent but can't communicate in French, and this is an essential skill, because it's the language of administration. So it's a real handicap for them," said the manager.

Leaders in the field of education are well aware of the language issue, and convened a conference to address the problem on Wednesday (October 20th). Abdellatif El Moudni, who serves as the interim secretary-general of the High Council of Education, acknowledged the importance of devoting more resources to language instruction.

"Language-learning is a major cross-cutting issue for the national education and training system and has a direct impact on its internal and external effectiveness, as well as on the economic, social, political, cultural and scientific sectors," he said at the two-day event.

Abderrahmane Rami, the head of the International Laboratory for Research on Education and Training, says that the stalling of the "Arabisation" process has greatly hindered efforts to improve teaching quality. In his view, the failure of Arabisation is due to the lack of a clear educational strategy. "It was difficult to classify French, and at the same time, it was impossible to implement Arabisation for all curricula," said the education expert. He also said that the lack of teacher training is another problem affecting language-learning in Moroccan schools.

According to Rami, the amount of time spent learning languages at primary school is just 1,200 hours for Arabic and 825 hours for French, while the international standard for language-learning demands 2,500 hours per language.

Experts and teachers who participated in the conference recommended the creation of an integrated language teaching system, which would require changes to both timetables and staffing levels. They also suggested that pupils should be offered a choice of languages in their studies, and that an additional emphasis on languages is needed at the level of secondary education.
http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2009/10/27/feature-02
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