Virtual Magazine of Morocco on the Web
Morocco Week in Review 
February 13, 2016

Alice Carter has traveled a long road to get to where she is today. Morocco, that is. Carter is the oldest current volunteer in the Peace Corps. She says she's been interested in the world for a long time. This isn't her first adventure. Even in her earlier life, she had more experiences than most. She's been married several times, including to a member of the wealthy Belmont family. She was involved in the civil rights movement and protested the Vietnam War with Daniel and Philip Berrigan. She was for a time involved in Synanon, the rehab facility-turned-cult. She has six children.

Carter ended up living in Boston, near several of her children. Until recently, she was tutoring inner-city kids and working as a cook in a Greek Orthodox Church. You might think that she would choose to calm down in her old age. But she wanted something different than the standard slow life for those in their twilight years. So a year ago, at the age of 86, Carter began serving as a volunteer for the Peace Corps in Morocco.

"It was like a little blip," she says of deciding to volunteer for the organization. "Like when you fall in love with somebody and that little blip — that click goes off, and you say, 'That's for me.'"

The 87-year-old talked with NPR's Rachel Martin from her station in Rabat, Morocco, about the Peace Corps' role in keeping her physically and mentally active.

On what made her think of volunteering for the Peace Corps
I went to a party in Vermont and I met a whole lot of 1960s Peace Corps graduates. They were all at this party and there was a recruiter there. So I kind of wandered over and said, "What's the cutoff?" And she said "Oh, there's no age limit." And bingo. I went home, got on the computer and started applying right away.

On resistance to the idea from her children and grandchildren
They came around, almost 100 percent of them except my granddaughter, who was from the get-go "No Peace Corps, no Peace Corps!" And I said, "No, I'm gonna go. I can't stand Boston anymore, I'm too old and I keep falling down in the snow. I have to find a warmer climate."

On being in the public view in old age
I like being very active, I like being with people, and my whole life has been forming relationships. And so, that has to continue. You can't quit. I've been told that it's hard to make friends as you get older. I have not found that to be true. In the Peace Corps I've made a lot of friends of younger people and the people ... in their 60s and 70s who are here.

On the physical demands of the work
I think that for people who are thinking about it who are our age, there's some specific concerns and one of them would be health. You kind of have to tinker with your body as you get older, so it's wonderful to have a supportive Peace Corps medical staff, which we have in Rabat. So that's one thing. Energy is another. When I first came, the head of the Dar Shabab, the youth center, wouldn't let me work more than four hours a week — he was afraid I would just tumble dead if he pushed me further. But then I kept picking up more and more kids and doing more and more, and he saw that I was going to live through it. So he eased up. But people do not push old people to work at the same pace that the younger people do.

On what she brings to the Peace Corps that is different
I think it's an attitude. Younger people in our culture are raised to compete. So they're all trying to do as much as possible and it's very restful for them to be around people who are not competing. I'm not here to be a world-beater or accomplish impossible tasks. And I just want you to know that you can have a really good time in the Peace Corps when you're old.

What next?
I have one more year and I'm not going to extend because I think my family would come and drag me off the continent of Africa if that happened. And I haven't made any plans about what I'm going to do when I come home.
Copyright 2016 NPR. http://www.npr.org/2016/02/13/466592640/peace-corps-volunteer-values-staying-active-in-old-age
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On the 400th anniversary of English playwright William Shakespeare’s death, Rabat will host for the first time his blockbuster dramatic play, Hamlet, on March 14th at Mohamed V Theater. The event will be organized by the British Council, the British Embassy and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in recognition of the playwright’s works. In conjunction with the British Council’s major cultural program, 2016 will be a year dedicated to the prominent English poet, paying tribute to his literary works and shedding light on the most significance events of his life. The play will be performed in English accompanied by French subtitles.

Hamlet is regarded one of the greatest, most renowned plays in the world. It is best known for the most popular quote in the English language: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” The line refers the most awful point in the life of Prince Hamlet, who deals with the shock of discovering that his uncle, Claudius, had murdered his father in order to marry his mother, Gertrude.

In 2014, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater celebrated the 450th anniversary of the English poet’s birth. Its theatrical company currently includes sixteen men and women who travel across the whole world performing Hamlet.

The Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe and the production of Hamlet expressed the accomplishments that the Globe to Globe Hamlet project achieved over two years: “Globe to Globe Hamlet has been performed in over 100 countries across the Americas, Europe, and Africa to more than 89,000 people. And only 1/2 of the whole tour is now complete.” Shakespeare’s Globe aims to spread the English playwright’s works through education and staging his works.
Tickets for Hamlet are now available at Mohammed V Theater in Rabat.
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179044/to-be-or-not-to-be-rabat-hosts-shakespeares-hamlet/
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High Atlas Foundation Partners with Clinton Global Initiative in Tree Planting Project near Marrakesh
Sunday 7 February 2016 - morocco world news By Colette Apelian Marrakech

Unfortunately, we are living in a time in which interfaith relations are usually reduced to negative caricatures defined by the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the so-called Islamic State madness, or the Charlie-Hebdo massacre.  What is often forgotten in the media coverage is the long history of co-existence and the commonalities between persons of different faiths or, what the President of the High Atlas Foundation and former Peace Corps volunteer, Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir calls, our humanity, a quality he interprets to be closely intertwined with mutual respect for the environment.

As an art and architectural historian, I see students learn this truism through the much maligned liberal arts and humanities courses, particularly art history and media and cultural studies. Dr. Ben-Meir practices it through the events and programs he and his team organize for the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) in Marrakech, Morocco.

HAF’s mission is to create sustainable development projects requested and controlled by the local communities and in partnership with the public, private and civil organizations. They take what the writer of the press release for the January 25, 2016 event describes as a participatory, democratic approach, asking members within the community to tell them their ideas, then organizing and pushing forward their projects with local representatives that bear HAF business cards. HAF projects are focused around five foci: youth, women, cultural diversity, clean drinking water, and clean energy, and include programs for encouraging organic farming to irrigation and solar energy. Other initiatives located throughout Morocco, especially the south and Sahara, are listed at their website. HAF is both a United States 501(c)(3) organization and a Moroccan non-profit association. Since 2011 it has held special Consultative Status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

HAF’s activities occur at a moment in which the Moroccan government with World Bank, United Nations, and United States government and nongovernmental support are sponsoring programs to encourage rural tourism, improvement of rural living conditions, and rural economic development. Country wide Programs are enumerated in the Vision 2020 plan for tourism and Maroc Green plan for agricultural opportunities. Projects include the creation of a tourist infrastructure in the countryside and possible exportation to European markets Morocco’s medicinal, aromatic, and beauty based agro-products researched by joint Moroccan, European, and American professors.

HAF is but one of the nongovernmental organizations working in conjunction with the Moroccan development agencies enacting local initiatives. The agencies include l’Agence pour la promotion et le Developpment du Nord, l’Agence du Sud, and l’Agence de l’Oriental. For each, and their donors, such as the World Bank, the United Nations, and the United States, improvement of the society is directly linked to creating jobs and economic opportunities, which, in turn, are enabled by education and training all of which have a larger goal of promoting Moroccan economic and political stability, preventing clandestine trade, and displacements of persons across urban/rural and national borders. HAF is distinguished from it counterparts by the focus on organic and energy efficient farming and development, and, thus, the introduction of Moroccan products into the lucrative export market for responsibly grown and created food, beauty, health, and fashion goods. The tree planting ceremony is part of the ambitious One Billion Tree Campaign to plant and distribute fruit trees, such as lemon and pomegranate, at Jewish sacred sites in and around the High Atlas. The larger goals are bringing communities out of poverty encouraged by subsidence farming and to help prevent soil erosion and deforestation. The organic fruit trees were grown on a nursery established on land lent to HAF by the Jewish community of Marrakesh-Essaouira in 2012.

The late January tree planting and distribution ceremony in the Tomsloht Commune, Akrich Village in the Al Haouz Province just south of Marrakesh was held on the fifteenth day of Shevat or Tu B’Shevat on the Jewish calendar. It is a day reserved for celebrating the new planting season, especially for fruiting trees. The ceremony was held in a fruit nursery next to the seven hundred year old resting place of a Jewish saint or marabout, Rabbi Raphael HaCohen, one of hundreds of Jewish sites of veneration throughout Morocco. Both Jews and Muslims venerate at his tomb, according to its Muslim caretaker. Legend has it that the shrine, housing for pilgrims, a synagogue, dining hall, and water well are on land donated by a local Basha whose life was saved by the Rabbi.

In attendance were the Wali of Marrakesh-Safi, Mr. Mohamed Moufakkir; the Governor of the Al Haouz province Mr. Younès Al-Bathaoui; the President of the Jewish community of Marrakesh-Essaouira, Mr. Jacky Kadoch; Dr. Ben-Meir; the United States Ambassador, the Honorable Dwight L. Bush, Dr., and members of the Akrich community. Invited guests included professors of agronomy and biodiversity, such as Ahmed Hakam and Ahmed Ouhammou, who is also concerned with preservation of the Marrakesh Toubkal National Park, and members of a nearby ladies’ couscous making cooperative, the Coopérative Aboghlo pour des femmes d’Ourika.

Also in attendance were HAF’s local project managers, including Hana Ezaoui and Amina El Hajjami.  Hana organizes fruit tree planting and education in the south at Boujdour, along with Jana Ceremniha, HAF’s Programing Assistant. Amina is the representative of the Coopérative Aboghlo pour des femmes d’Ourika. Local beneficiaries included school children, who also helped in planting the fig tree. David Bult, leader of Green Sahara furniture brought his next group of Moroccan youths from Asni who will be trained in in Casablanca to create designer pieces from fallen wood.

The January 25, 2016 ceremony in Akrich heralds a partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action tree planting project. The ceremony ended with Mr. Bush and Mr. Al Bathaoui signing a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action plan to plant a million trees in nurseries adjoining historic rural Jewish burial sites in the southern Moroccan provinces of Azilal, Essaouira and Ouarzazate. The goal is to benefit local, disadvantaged Muslim farmers.

The HAF-CGI event was marked by a ceremonial fig tree planting ceremony and dispersal of trees to local farming families, especially their young men and girls. When I asked the young men later what they planned to do with the saplings, they said they would plant them in the middle of their homes, which usually have open courtyards, then, in a few years, enjoy and sell the fruit in the town market.

What struck me most about the occasion is what it said about not just Morocco at this juncture in history and economy, but as Dr. Ben-Meir said, our humanity and what brings us together. Trees have been cross-culturally venerated since prehistoric times. They have spiritual significance in Greco-Roman mythology, Zoroastrianism, the Vedas, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wiccan beliefs, Confucianism, Daoism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Zen beliefs. They are venerated today by the three Abrahamic religions. In Gnostic Jewish beliefs or the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life is a way of describing all forms of existence. We learn from Edward Westermarck Ritual and Belief in Morocco (1926) the significance of trees and their reverence in Morocco, particularly of fig and fruiting trees.

Indeed, veneration of the natural world is part of Moroccan intangible cultural heritage, whether one has access to a garden in the center of a home or a field one cultivates. Symbolic representations of the natural world animates the arts and crafts of Morocco, particularly Berber or Amazigh woodworking and textiles, some of which are on display in Marrakesh museums like the Jardin Majorelle and the Tiskiwin. It can even be found in the contemporary arts of the Musée de la Palmeraie, particularly in the work of Farid Belkahia. Cannot their presence and our mutual awe and reverence of the environment bring us together in peace much like the arts, sports, and food, if not also the cross faith veneration of saints and ancestors?  And, if I may switch hats to one of a cultural programing officer, might not Vision 2020 to create rural tourist destinations also include gardens and greenery around the marabout structures like one might find in the New Orleans cemeteries and at Père Lachaise in Paris? Morocco has similar tourist appeal potential in its saint filled cemeteries, not to mention a way to show how Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are similar, and how Islam is religiously diverse, particularly in Morocco.

How the HAF CGF plans develop is a future investigation. There are a few challenges to working the rural areas of Morocco and Akrich is like many small agricultural towns. Though only a half hour from Marrakesh, a city characterized by large shopping malls and amenities, Akrich has a relatively basic infrastructure. There is at least some electricity, perhaps solar, near the marabout, however telephone service and Internet access is nearly nonexistent with Maroc-Telecom, at least, making communication with program organizers and distributors more difficult in this region. It is an agricultural community of small scale farmers with products, but little infrastructure for vending them for a profit that befits their labor, at least not yet and not outside their immediate locale. The saplings are a significant start. However HAF and their beneficiaries will need assistance in the future to bring their value and promise to fruition.

Colette Apelian is a researcher, visual culture specialist, and elearning expert based in Morocco.  Her publication topics include the histories of automobile and electricity, street and fine art, taxi and truck decoration, urban wildlife, the social use of commercial centers and advertising, food, and the environment.  Excerpts of this article are part of her forthcoming environmental and vegetarian food guides to be published during 2016. Her publications are for sale at Amazon.com.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179251/high-atlas-foundation-partners-with-clinton-global-initiative-in-tree-planting-project-near-marrakesh/===================================================================================

Morocco’s Jewish Berber History.
by Lynn Sheppard | Monuments and Sights

Many visitors to Morocco are surprised to learn of the country’s cultural diversity. Although today a majority Arab Muslim country, Morocco has a significant Jewish past (and present) as well as indigenous Amazigh (also known as Berber) population who pre-date the Arab immigration.

A fascinating aspect of Morocco’s history is where Berber and Jewish history and culture intertwine. Transliteration of Berber language is a recent innovation and so Berber history was seldom recorded. In fact, it is often due to enthusiastic members of the Moroccan Jewish diaspora and other chroniclers of Jewish history that we can gain an insight into the peaceful and fruitful coexistence between Berbers of Jewish and Muslim faith.

Although travelers to Morocco will meet Moroccans of Berber origin almost everywhere, their homelands are the rural and often mountainous areas such as the Atlas and Rif mountains and the desert. Recent political movements to recognize their indigenous heritage, languages and culture have drawn on the similarities across three main geographical and linguistic Berber groups in Morocco, which together form around 40% of the population. The call for greater recognition and autonomy has drawn on a broader movement across North Africa and the Sahara among the Amazigh (plural: Imazighen, meaning “free men”).
There are two theories regarding the existence of a distinctly Jewish subgroup of Berbers. Whether indigenous Moroccan Berbers adopted the Jewish faith and culture, and/or Jews migrated to North Africa and adopted the Berber language and culture, the layers of Morocco’s cultural patchwork probably pre-date the Roman era.

Historians refer to several waves of Jewish immigration to North Africa, beginning potentially with the destruction of Solomon’s Temple after the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC but certainly underway by the time of the Jewish Rebellion in the Middle East against the Romans, which began in 66 AD. Jews are said to have flown major cities such as Fes and Meknes to the Atlas mountains during persecution by the Almohad Caliphate which ruled North Africa and Al Andalus (including parts of the Iberian peninsula) during the 12th and 13th centuries. The Almohads, Berber Muslims, were significantly less tolerant of non-Muslims than their predecessors. In a historical twist, it was in these cities that many Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century found shelter and success.

Despite religious differences, the proximity of Muslim and Jewish neighbours within rural Morocco created closely-knit communities, meaning that crafts, customs, culture and language were exchanged to create a uniquely Moroccan mix. Although today there are virtually no Jews living in rural Berber communities, their legacy is visible all over the country if you know where to look.

As well as the Mellah (Jewish quarter), cemeteries and synagogues found in many Moroccan cities such as Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech and Essaouira, there are also events and sites of Jewish religious and cultural significance in rural areas. The moussem (pilgrimage) of Ait Bayoud in Essaouira Province, held every Spring, is one such example. Further South, an ancient Jewish Berber community is recorded in Oufrane, in the Souss region (not to be confused with the ski resort Ifrane in the Middle Atlas), where Jews are said to have lept into fire rather than convert to Islam in the 18th century. Nearby, significant sites can still be visited in Ighil n-Ogho near Talouine (in the Anti Atlas and famous for saffron) and in Arazane (30km from Taroudant). In the Ammeln Valley near Tafraoute, locals claim certain tribes are still referred to as Aït-Aouday (“Tribe of the Jews”), although the Jews are long gone.

Further east towards the Algerian border, is the town of Amezrou, which sits on the caravan route up from sub-Saharan Africa, along which camels once carried goods from the Jewish enclave at Timbuktu to the port of Mogador (Essaouira). Here, Berbers still practice the same silversmithing techniques introduced by the Jews. The khamissa, in the shape of a hand, used to ward off the evil eye, is a symbol based on a pentagram which unites Jewish, Muslim and more ancient customs and is still cast in Berber silver today.

Moving north east, along the famous ‘route of a 1000 Kasbahs,’ the Jewish Berber community of Tinghir, on the east side of the Atlas mountains, was documented in Kamal Hachkar’s recent film, ‘Tinghir-Jerusalem – Echoes from the Mellah.’ In the town, there were certain trades practiced by Jews and others by Muslims. Each community had its places of worship but they shared their festivities, their language – the good times and bad – for over 2000 years right up until the 1960s.

Heading back across the high passes into the mountains, there are many remote communities of the High Atlas where traces are still visible of Jewish Berber communities. The High Atlas Foundation, which is supported by Journey Beyond Travel, today arranges for Jewish Community of Marrakech to loan land near Jewish holy sites for the development of organic fruit and herb nurseries for the benefit of impoverished local communities. Such projects are present at Akraich (Al Haouz Province) and are also being developed in Azilal Province.  In this latter province, the Ait Bougemez Valley (Morocco’s so-called ‘Happy Valley’) exhibits a fascinating element of Berber history. A communal granary (in the local Berber dialect, agadir) sits on the summit of a strangely pyramidal hill that was once the site of pilgrimages to the Jewish saint, Sidi Moussa. The granary, now UNESCO-registered, is said to offer fertility benefits to young women who visit it – a distinctly un-Islamic practice in itself which one can imagine draws on traditions far older than Bible.

Once visitors to Morocco scratch beneath the surface, they will find a history more diverse – and yet more unified – than most would suspect. This is Morocco’s distinct heritage which sets it apart from other North African and Middle East countries and which is still – in great part – waiting to be discovered and documented.

If you’d like to dig deeper into the history of Morocco we can help. Our team can create an itinerary for you that focuses on bringing this history alive. Your visit can be built around this theme or include it with a combination of other destinations and sites. Contact us today to begin planning. 

Jewish Morocco Discovery
Jewish Mellahs of Morocco
Ancient Jewish Sights in Morocco
Morocco Jewish Museum

About the Author: Lynn Sheppard has lived in Essaouira, on Morocco’s Atlantic Coast for more than 2 years, supporting local non-profits, writing and becoming an expert on all things Swiri (ie. Essaouiran). She blogs at maroc-o-phile.com as well as for travel industry clients.
https://www.journeybeyondtravel.com/blog/morocco-jewish-berber-history.html
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The Art of Halqa, Site-Specificity, and Moroccan Cultural Identity (Part I)
Friday 12 February 2016 - morocco world news By Jaouad Radouani Rabat

This article seeks to discuss the question of culture, art, and identity in Morocco. It aims to do so by analyzing the role art plays in consolidating the notion of nationalism, spreading it, and helping individuals, and the society as a whole, preserve their cultural identity.

Amid the modern globalized culture which is turning the world into a small village, it is hard to keep oneself distanced from the wave. As a result, the fear of losing ones’ identity became a concern. Many are wondering how to save their cultural heritage from loss and balance themselves between a globalized culture and a local one. This piece, which deals with Morocco and Moroccan popular art, attempts to shed light on a popular tradition of artistic expression, Halqa,[1] and highlights its role as popular entertainment of the local culture and national identity, saving it from loss. It provides a detailed description of this site-specific art and tries to connect it to the process of forming Moroccan individuals and the society, in general, as a social entity with a definite identity.

One of the most specific theatrical forms that Morocco is famous for is “Halqa.” This type of theatrical performance does not take place in theaters, closed stages, saloons, or opera houses. It is tied to open spaces such as ‘Jamea Lefna’ in Marrakech, weekly Souks,[2] popular markets (Souika), and pavements of crowded streets. Halqa, as a drama, does not need many actors, it is usually lead by one main performer,‘Lhlaiqi.’ Additionally, this figure is usually accompanied by women dancers, musical instruments, or non-human assistants such as obedient pets, tamed snakes, or well-trained monkeys and donkeys that can perform extraordinary actions and understand the language of the master.

The ‘hlaiqi,’[3] through heroic action and well-made rhetoric, addresses all generations that crowd around him in a funny and ironic way. He acts, talks a lot, speaks to animals that act according to his orders, makes fun of members of the crowd, plays the fool, talks politics, imitates sounds, and does gymnastics for a few coins or will ask only for good wishes as compensation for his art. Halqa is purely a Moroccan genre of drama that has deep cultural dimensions that stem from the heart of the community’s cultural lore.

What is Halqa as a site-specific Moroccan theatrical tradition? This will be explained by exploring the role of this art form in entertaining audiences, shaping identities, and spreading information and wisdom.

Halqa: Meaning and Functions
Halqa is an ancient Moroccan form of art. It is a theatrical performance, a play held in outdoors. What makes it different from theatre is its content and the specific locations it is held. Halqa relies on storytelling as well as instant, witty improvisation and spontaneity.

The open zones where most Halqas are held really hold attention. Halqa are performed in areas that are crowded and very popular. There are places in certain Moroccan cities that are famous for holding Halqas on a daily basis. Fun chasers, who know about places where Halqas are held, from both in and out of Morocco, may travel hundreds of miles to enjoy Halqa shows. Professor Khalid Amine explains this: Al-halqa is the most overtly theatrical among several artistic spaces in the market place as well as in other public spheres such as the gates of ancient Moroccan medinas (bab rwa:h, bab al-mqa:m, bab mansu:r l?lej, Jema’ el-fna, bab fahs…).[4]

There are some laws that Halqa, as a traditional art, never breaks. Its characteristics are widely known among popular masses all around the nation and tourists who are well acquainted with the general mood of life in Morocco. The specific locations of Halqa must be open, wide, crowded with people, and compatible with its mimetic art that relies on storytelling. A theatrical institution would not work for a Halqa to be held, while a corner on the pavement of a street will do very well. Professor Amine defines Halqa as: Al-halqa is a public gathering in the form of a circle around a person or a number of persons (hlayqi / hlayqia) in a public space (be it a marketplace, a medina gate, or a newly devised downtown square). It is a space of popular culture that is open to all the people from different walks of life.[5]

The circles of Halqa are formed by people who like to listen to what Lhlaiqi says and enjoy his charming shows. In fact, Lhlaiqi never invites people to the ring, nor does he ever call peddlers to gather around him. He simply chooses the right spot to give his show and spontaneously starts performing his art. Knowing that everybody is welcome to watch the show, ready to give a coin or just watch and applaud, people form a loop around Lhlaiqi with no pre-arranged meeting. Halqa could better be described, at the level of content and means of communication with audiences, in the following words: Al-halqa hovers between high culture and low mass culture, sacred and profane, literacy and orality … Its repertoire combines fantastic, mythical, and historical narratives from Thousand and One Nights and Si:rat bani: hila:l, as well as stories from the holy Quran and the Sunna of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) along with local witty narrative and performative forms. The medium of the halqa also varies from storytelling to acrobatic acting and dancing.[6]

What makes Halqa a highly demanded popular and famous art is its multifunction. Halqa does not only entertain, it instructs, informs, teaches, and preaches on different sacred and profane matters. It has a decisive role in shaping identities. Humor is always the main end Halqa is set for. A Halqa show is always full of action, zealous sounds of tambourines, and wise and witty talks. Khalid Amine writes: Yet, how does al-halqa contribute to the shaping of both Moroccan individual and communal identity? Is it functional in the construction of Moroccan cultural identity or simply a mere transmission belt that does no more than reflect a given environment? In all its diversity, al-halqa has been a vital source of artistic delight and entertainment, as well as a means of spacing cultural identity. In other words, besides its aesthetic aspects –given the fact that it should be conceived of as a performance event- it is a medium of information and circulation of social energy, a social drama and a subsidiary school whose syllabus is as fluid as its rich repertoire. In sum, al-halqa contributes to the representation of historical consciousness and cultural identity, through formulaic artistic expression.[7]

It seems that Halqa is not a mere performative funny show. It is a social drama, a school, a medium of energy, a syllabus, a means that represents history, consciousness, and identity through artistic expression. Halqa’s active role and endless charms are best summarized in these few words:
Al-halqa is a popular performance framed in a circular architecture and characterized by making a spectacle as a process in motion rather than a final product presented to a passive consumer.[8]

As a “traditional pre-theatrical form of orature,”[9] Halqa classifies as a rich oral, cultural tradition which contains a large amount of lore. It is not only that, Halqa is a medium in which all kinds of disciplines are mixed. Taking history as an example, in Halqa shows one could find the history of a whole nation, from colonial times to now. Nevertheless, in Halqa everybody finds part and parcel of him, of his story in the village, of his people and rulers, and of the daily funny moments that masses go through. All such events come out in a comedic and entertaining manner.

[1] The word ‘Halqa’ is a direct translation of the word in Arabic.
[2] Weekly Souks are markets that are held on the same day of the week. On such occasions, people from different walks of life and social classes gather in large numbers to buy merchandise, food, and materials. Lhlaiqi uses this opportunity to show visitors some fun.
[3] Hlaiqi is the performer of Halqa; he is the one dramatist who both produces the show of Halqa and performs it at the same time. His roles inside the ring of Halqa have no limits and vary according to the subject that is the main focus of his show.
[4] Khalid Amine, “Crossing Borders: Al-halqa Performance in Morocco From the Open Space to the Theatre Building,” in ‘The Drama Review’ – Volume 45, Number 2 (T 170), Summer 2001. p. 55.
[5] Ibid., p. 55.
[6] Ibid., p. 55.
[7] Ibid., p. 56-57.
[8] Ibid., 57
[9] Ibid., 60.
© Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179676/the-art-of-halqa-site-specificity-and-moroccan-cultural-identity-part-i/
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Column: Not all Muslim nations restrict women's rights.
Rekha Basu, rbasu@dmreg.com January 19, 2016

Here’s an interesting fact about Morocco that could challenge your views about the rights of women in a Muslim country with an Islamist political party in power.
A woman there can do something women in America cannot: Walk into a pharmacy and buy birth control pills over the counter.

That’s not something you’re likely to hear from state legislators around the United States, who’ve been whipping up bogus fears about Islamic Sharia law and stonings of women taking place over here. Moroccan politicians, just like ours, differ on the role religion should play in the nation’s laws and public policies.
“This idea that there is one unified Islamic world is wrong,” says the man who heads Morocco’s independent human rights commission. There is the Saudi version, in which women are not allowed to drive. There are North African, Indonesian, Malaysian, Turkish and sub-Saharan versions.

I had the opportunity Monday to talk by phone with Driss El-Yazami, president of the Moroccan National Human Rights Council (CNDH), created in 2011 and enshrined in the country’s constitution. It came about in response to massive demonstrations demanding greater recognition of human rights. El-Yazami had been a human-rights activist living in exile in France since the 1970s during the tenure of a former king. A few years ago, he was invited by current King Mohammed VI to head the council. When we spoke, El-Yazami was visiting Washington, D.C.

Under Morocco's constitution, the king is the commander of all people of faith, including Jews, Christians and Muslims. The council’s approach to increasing democratic rights and freedoms in Morocco is to study an issue, make a report and initiate dialogue between various factions. Then the recommendations go to Parliament to vote on. Last year the council went through that process with a view to relaxing the country’s 10-year-old law that permits abortion only when a mother’s life or health is endangered.

Though there is no scientific data, the Moroccan Association for the Struggle Against Clandestine Abortion claims the law has resulted in some 800 back-alley abortions a day, resulting in about 13 percent of all maternal deaths. At the king's request, a panel including religious clerics, doctors and legislators was convened to look into relaxing it. The council wants to do that at least for rape or incest cases, and where there are birth defects or genetic diseases. El-Yazami's side also wants a woman to have the option if her pregnancy resulted from a lengthy unwed affair that ended.

It might be hard for a politician here to gain allies using that example. The council received 75 filings from Moroccans, the majority in favor of loosening restrictions. A new draft law is expected from Parliament.

"Some Arab and Muslim countries such as Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco are observing a silent revolution when it comes to women,” El-Yazami said.
He said women in those countries used to have on average 7.2 children apiece, but that number has been reduced to 2.10. “In all Western societies, equality begins when women have less children,” he said. Freed from “the power of men,” they are better able to get an education and go into the work force.

All girls now attend primary school in Tunisia and Morocco, which they didn’t do 20 years ago. More women are in the work force and there are five female government ministers. There is also a draft law before the Parliament to create a new institution for gender equality.These changes, including the one resulting in contraception without prescriptions, came about as a result of feminist activism dating back to 2003-04, according to El-Yazami. Some of it happened over the Internet and with support from non-governmental organizations. He said there were huge demonstrations both for and against liberalization.
Muslim scholars have written feminist interpretations of Islam. Alhough same-sex sexual relationships are forbidden by law, they are "an old tradition in our literature," El-Yazami said.

There are ongoing tensions between his side, which bases its positions on the constitution, and religious factions, which base theirs on religious interpretations. El-Yazami said the prime minister attacked him as anti-Islamic over the council's advocacy for more inheritance rights for women. But El-Yazami argues equality between men and women is at the heart of the Moroccan constitution.

The prime minister is from Morocco's majority Islamist party, but there are three secular parties in Morocco's Parliament. El-Yazami says there's not a specifically Muslim argument on abortion; the clerics use the same reasoning as pro-life people in the U.S. At least they can have peaceful debate on it, El-Yazami said. "In Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, they're killing each other over this issue."

And at least we can also have a peaceful debate. Although we do have more liberal abortion rights in the U.S., the push for change is going in the opposite direction. Maybe we're not so different from a Muslim country after all
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/rekha-basu/2016/01/19/column-not-all-muslim-nations-restrict-womens-rights/79010766/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=
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Morocco Announces Protective Measures to Ward off Zika Virus
Friday 12 February 2016 - morocco world news By Asmaa Bahadi Rabat

Zika, a mosquito-borne virus, has prompted worldwide concern both due to the virus’s rapid spread across the globe and its alarming connection to a neurological birth disorder when contracted by pregnant women. Morocco’s Ministry of Health announced that no case of Zika has been reported in the country.

The Ministry of Health has decided to implement a series of measures to protect Moroccans in the potential event of the virus’s spread to the country, by strengthening the epidemiological surveillance system for early detection of any future cases of infection and tracking cases of microcephaly in newborn children.

Blood donations were cancelled for those returning from affected countries for a period of 28 days after reentering Morocco. As for people with travel plans to countries where Zika is present, the Ministry of Health advises strict adherence to the following mosquito protection measures: using an EPA-approved repellent over sunscreen, wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts thick enough to block mosquito bites and sleeping in air-conditioned, screened rooms.

The virus is most commonly transmitted when an Aedes mosquito bites a person with an active infection and subsequently spreads the virus when it bites others. Those infected then become carriers as soon as they experience symptoms. In most people, symptoms of the virus are mild, including fever, headache, rash and possible pink eye. In fact, 80 percent of those infected never know they have the disease. This is especially concerning for pregnant women, as this virus has now been shown to pass through amniotic fluid to the growing baby.

The Zika virus is now being locally transmitted in Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, St. Martin, Suriname, Samoa, Tonga, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela, according to the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.
With no treatment or vaccine available, the only protection against Zika is to avoid travel to areas with an active infestation.

Researchers are hard at work in laboratories around the world trying to create a Zika vaccine. A clinical trial for a Zika virus vaccine could begin this year. “While in development, it’s important to understand we won’t have a vaccine this year or even in the next few years, although we may be able to have a clinical trial start this calendar year,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health.
Edited by Kelsey Fish
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179669/morocco-announces-protective-measures-to-ward-off-zika-virus/
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Music of Morocco: Recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959 Box Set Announced
Four CDs in a silkscreened cigar box; it comes with a 120-page leatherette book featuring an introduction from Lee Ranaldo
By Evan Minsker on February 12, 2016

Paul Bowles was an American expatriate composer and author who lived in Tangier. In 1959, he traveled around Morocco and recorded vocal and instrumental music of various tribes and indigenous populations. The Library of Congress issued a double album of those recordings in 1972. On April 1, Dust-to-Digital will release Music of Morocco, a box set featuring that original double album plus a pile of unreleased music from Bowles' 1959 recordings.

The box set comes with four CDs featuring over four hours of music. It's packaged in a silkscreened cigar box with foil stamping details. There's also a 120-page leatherette book featuring an introduction from Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Bowles' original field notes, and annotations by Philip Schuyler.
Find the full tracklist and more details here.
http://pitchfork.com/news/63494-music-of-morocco-recorded-by-paul-bowles-1959-box-set-announced/
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Amazigh Celebrate 13th Anniversary of Adoption of Tifinagh
Thursday 11 February 2016 - morocco world news Zainab Calcuttawala Rabat

Tifinagh, the Amazigh alphabet, has seen significant technical advancement since the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture adopted the symbols 13 years ago, according to the theme of a symposium organized by the institute in Rabat.  The symposium, held on Wednesday, was titled “Tifinagh symbols: from rock carvings to technological software.” It discussed the successful integration of the Amazigh language in media, and scientific research thanks to the efforts of the institute.

A statement from the organizing committee added that celebrating the 13th anniversary of this adoption has special significance, since “[the day] comes at a crucial point in history marked by a debate about regulatory laws to formalize the Amazigh language and the preparation of a new law that will govern the National Council for Moroccan Languages ??and Culture.”

Ahmed Baucus, director of the institute, explained that the Tifinagh symbols have particularly progressed in the field of education and literary creativity in the past 10 years.

At 5,000-years old, the Amazigh language is one of the oldest on the planet and is a sister language to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Before Arab armies settled in North Africa in the seventh century, the language was widely spoken by the Amazighi inhabitants of the region. Despite the dominance of Arab culture that accompanied mass conversions into Islam, the language was persevered through oral tradition. Support for Amazigh language and cultural studies was virtually nonexistent in the Kingdom before long-term efforts by Amazighi activists led to the formation of the institute in 2003.

In 2005, the BBC reported on the introduction of the Tifinagh script in the elementary curriculum in a village in the High Atlas Mountains. “Now that the ministry of education here in Morocco has integrated our language into public schools, we, as Amazighs will find our identity again,” said Sadia Bussta, a local Amazigh woman who speaks Berber with her family, but only learned to read and write in Arabic during her schooling. “We are proud that our children can read and learn in our own language,” she said.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179577/morocco-amazigh-celebrate-13th-anniversary-of-adoption-of-tifinagh/
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Morocco’s New Ambassador to Washington: Tough Challenges and New Opportunities
Thursday 11 February 2016 - Hassan Masiky Washington D.C

Morocco’s new ambassador, Lalla Joumala Alaoui, lands in Washington at a critical time for the Moroccan diplomacy, especially in light of Rabat’s recent setbacks in Brussels and the U.S. Administration’s lack of clear support to Morocco’s position on the “Western Sahara.”

Since Morocco’s new chief diplomat in Washington happens to also be a Princess and a cousin of Morocco’s current King Mohammed VI, Rabat could be predisposed to emphasize “the family ties” rather than working the halls of Congress and engaging the American civil society when advocating for the Kingdom.
Nonetheless, a candid presentation of Morocco’s successes, mistakes and challenges will assist Ambassador Lalla Joumala stay informed on what is being said about her country and help her respond effectively to criticism from powerful players such as the Washington Post and New York Times editorial pages or reports form organizations like Human Rights Watch.

The significance of some of the rapidly shifting diplomatic maneuvers by Morocco’s enemies, require an even greater need for honesty and transparency in briefing the new ambassador. It is time to step away from overhyped public relations events that do little to advance the Kingdom’s interests.

Moroccan diplomats in Washington have been heavily inclined to build personal relationships with key political figures at the expense of expanding institutional bridges between the two countries’ strategic establishments. The “personal” approach creates temporary diplomatic victories that fail to withstand the rigors of political and legal scrutiny of the American system of government.

Previous ambassadors in Washington “flunked” their attempts to boost Morocco’s accomplishments around the world. They over-relied on lobbyists and public relation firms to do most of the diplomatic work, making some of the Kingdom’s successful campaigns to promote peace, religious harmony and conflict resolution look like staged events.

For Ambassador Lalla Joumala to succeed, she will need a frank and open briefing. Let’s hope that Ambassador Rachad Bouhlal, who is leaving Washington for Tokyo, provides the new diplomat with a true and accurate account of the state of affairs of the Moroccan American relations, especially Washington’s position on the Sahara conflict and the work of human rights organizations in the USA.

Morocco’s relations with the United States have been rightly focused on the long friendly history that bonds the two nations. However, in the age of religious extremism, terrorism, mass migration and economic development, Rabat needs to reshape and redefine the relations between the two countries from historic ties to mutual interests with equal benefits.

Lalla Joumala may have to emphasize again the importance of the stability in Morocco to the world’s fight against terrorism and religious extremism. To remain an effective military and intelligence partner, Morocco needs a sustained broad international support for its position on the Sahara.

In fact, an American implicit validation of Moroccan’s sovereignty over the Sahara will drastically change the political and security dynamics in North Africa, freeing both Rabat and Algiers to join forces to pacify Libya and stabilize Tunisia.

Given the new Ambassadors proximity to the Moroccan Monarch, the Princess may be able to develop a blended diplomatic-intelligence-military diplomatic policy in Washington that will have implications far beyond Washington.

By cutting the usual red tape and avoiding the in-palace maneuverings, Lalla Joumala may in fact come up with the formula that will turn Morocco’s diplomatic efforts in solving conflicts around the world into solid gains in the Sahara conflict.

America needs to maintain diverse and coherent alliances around the globe to be able to defend its national security. The challenge for the new Ambassador would be to highlight her country’s role in this alliance and Morocco’s expectations in terms of advancing the Kingdom’s own interests around the world including an international the recognition of the Moroccan Sahara. These challenges highlight the need for a novel approach that brings new ideas that will eventually exhibit all the elements of a more comprehensive Moroccan diplomatic strategy in Washington.
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179612/moroccos-new-ambassador-to-washington-tough-challenges-and-new-opportunities/
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Almond Blossom Festival in Tafraout
Wednesday 10 February morocco world news Asmaa Bahadi Rabat

Under the motto “Land of Almond, Wealth of Tomorrow,” the Tafraout Almond Association will hold the 6th Annual Almond Festival on March 4th-6th. The event is organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the National Agency for the Development of Oases and Argan Trees, the Province of Souss Massa, the Prefecture of Tiznit’s, the Municipality of Tafraout, and a group of local and nation businesses.

The Almond Festival is an occasion where the Tafraout Tree Association celebrates the blossoming of almond trees, the development of local product through new methods, and the strengthening of social solidarity. The Association hopes to do this by creating a dynamic economy for the benefit of agricultural cooperatives and preserving the traditional character of the region.

Tafraout Almond Association has developed a diverse programs designed to blend culture, sports, arts, tourism, and local business, among many other surprises. The association will also be welcoming many visitors and tourists to promote the progress of local development projects in the region. This year’s festival program will be announced soon by the Tafraout Almond Association.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179466/almond-blossom-festival-in-tafraout/
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Greater education about a healthy diet and lifestyle and increased exercising facilities for women are needed to fight obesity in Morocco. Like many developing countries, Morocco is in the midst of a health transition. Until recently, infectious diseases and undernourishment posed the greatest threats to Moroccans’ health.

But due to changing demographics, diets and lifestyles, Moroccans are increasingly threatened by the same chronic diseases that plague the Western world: heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. The rising rates of these diseases are results of changing trends in diets and lifestyles as the Moroccan population becomes wealthier and more urban.

Obesity is steadily on the rise in Morocco, affecting over 20% of the population. While the public fight against obesity is familiar to Americans, such efforts are far more complex in a country that is still simultaneously battling undernourishment.

A generation ago, far more Moroccans were threatened by undernutrition than by overnutrition. Rising incomes, urbanization and globalization have all contributed to increased food security in Morocco in recent decades, as well as greater availability of new and different kinds of foods. All of these factors have combined to change dietary consumption patterns in the country, putting many Moroccans at high risk for obesity and its associated health problems.
Globalization has been a major force behind dietary change in Morocco. The introduction and popularization of Western food products like Coca Cola and pasta have increased Moroccans’ already high intake of sugars and carbohydrates.

Western fast food chains such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King are now commonplace in urban Morocco. Unlike the United States, these fast food chains are still prohibitively expensive for average Moroccans, and are frequented instead by urban, middle- and upper-class Moroccans. The McDonald’s in Fes, for example, is considered a destination for a nice night out on the weekends among the middle-class Moroccans residing in the Ville Nouvelle (the new part of the city).

Western influences aside, particularities in Moroccan culture and cuisine also play major roles in the obesity epidemic. Traditional Moroccan cuisine is very high in carbohydrates. Bread has long been a staple of North African cuisine, and is used as a utensil to consume savory meat and vegetable stews called tajines. These dishes are heavy in meat and oil, which Moroccans sop up using their bread. Poorer Moroccans who cannot afford large quantities of meat in their tajines often compensate with high quantities of bread (oftentimes a small loaf per person per meal).

Ironically, very poor Moroccans who cannot afford meat at all tend to have healthier diets that are centered on beans and pulses such as lentils and chickpeas. Because the ability to purchase meat is still a sign of wealth in Morocco, most people who can afford meat eat and serve it abundantly.

Sugar is also a major culprit of the rising obesity rates in Morocco. A staple of the Moroccan diet, sugar is used in abundance to sweeten Morocco’s “national drink”: mint tea. Moroccan mint tea is itself an early example of globalization affecting traditional cuisine, as the drink is prepared using green gunpowder tea from China, local mint and sugar, which was originally imported. Most Moroccans drink multiple glasses of sugary mint tea a day. The drink is the centerpiece of many important daily rituals in Morocco—most notably when welcoming guests.

Obesity affects women at far higher rates than men. Of Morocco’s 300,000 obese people, 63% are women. There are a few factors at play here.
First, female fatness is still considered a sign of beauty, fertility and prosperity in many parts of Morocco, especially the south. In contrast to the Western obsession with thinness, many Moroccan men still prefer women with significant amounts of body fat, which they see as correlated with a woman’s wealth and readiness to bear children. Marriage and children are highly coveted in Moroccan society.

Second, the lack of opportunities for women to exercise regularly is also to blame for the gender differential when it comes to obesity in Morocco. Many Moroccan women feel uncomfortable exercising publicly, due to frequent sexual harassment and cultural norms in many areas that make it abnormal for a woman to exercise in the streets, especially alone. Of course, many rural Moroccan women spend most of their days performing difficult physical labor, which partially explains why obesity affects urban women more than rural women. While men can frequently be seen jogging or playing soccer outdoors, women face far greater cultural barriers to participating in the same activities.

Third, obesity in Morocco is positively correlated with income, but negatively correlated with education. This suggests that access to more expensive and highly caloric Western food products such as fast food and soft drinks is a major culprit in the rise in obesity rates, especially in urban areas. It also shows that as Moroccans become more educated, they are able to make healthier choices related to diet and lifestyle and are at less of a risk for becoming obese.
As the Moroccan government begins to acknowledge overnutrition as a major health risk alongside undernutrition, greater education about a healthy diet and lifestyle and increased exercise opportunities for women would go a long way in fighting obesity.
http://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/women-disproportionately-affected-rising-obesity-morocco-03853/===================================================================================

Rising Obesity Disproportionately Affects Moroccan Women 
MENAFN - Morocco World News - 09/02/2016

Rapid urbanization and rising incomes in Morocco have led to a rise in obesity in recent years particularly in women according to research by Fulbright scholar Anna Boots.

Moroccans of the past generation especially those who lived in the desert regions struggled mainly with undernourishment issues as a result of the infertility of the arid land. Rapid urbanization and mass migration for economic opportunities in the past decades has madeit so48% of the urban population resides in the fertile plains and coastal regions of northwestern Morocco a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said.

Due to these changing demographics more Moroccans are more able to enjoy the country's bountiful agriculture than in any other point in modern history. Unfortunately high consumption of sugary mint tea carb-filled bread and other staples of Moroccan cuisine has caused the country to experience increased rates of diseases associated with over-nourishment such as diabetes obesity and heart disease.

Data from the U.S.-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation shows that diabetes has jumped from being the 15th leading cause of premature death in Moroccans in 1990 to the third by 2013 while hert disease jumped from the fifth to the second cause in the same period.

The lack of opportunities for women to exercise in their newly urban environments coupled with cultural preferences for 'well-rounded' women has led to a situation where 63% of the 300000 obese Moroccans are women according to Boots.

While rural women continue to perform difficult physical labor which keeps them in shape sexual harassment in urban centers deters urban women from exercising outside. Due to sexual harassment urban women still do not feel at home outside and tend to avoid going outside unless they think they have a good reason to do so according to a 2012 study by social anthropologist and arabist Safaa Monqid.

Higher incomes stemming from urbanization and trends in globalization have attracted Western fast-food chains such as Pizza Hut and McDonalds to open their doors and serve their high-calorie meals to middle-class Moroccans putting them at risk for obesity and related diseases. According to Boots with the complex health effects of Morocco’s new social and economic order now materializing 'greater education about a healthy diet and lifestyle and increased exercise opportunities for women would go a long way in fighting obesity.'
http://www.menafn.com/1094582470/Morocco--Rising-Obesity-Disproportionately-Affects-Moroccan-Women
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Three Moroccan Natives in the French Government
Saturday 13 February 2016 - Ryme Khairi Paris

As part of the French government reshuffle aiming at rallying the left before the presidential elections that will take place in just 15 months, Audrey Azoulay, daughter of King Mohamed VI’s adviser Andre Azoulay, has replaced former culture and communication minister Fleur Pellerin. This new appointment is certainly not without significance. With this cabinet reshuffle, three Moroccan natives are now part of the French Government:
1.  On 16 May 2012, Najat vallaud-belkacem was appointed Minister’s of Women’s Rights and Government’s spokesperson. Then, on 2 August 2014, she was named Minister of City Affairs, Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports before becoming Minister of Higher Education and Research replacing Benoit Hamon on 26 August 2014.
2.  On 26 August 2014, Myriam el Khomri was appointed Secretary of State to the Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sports, responsible for urban policy. Then, on 2 September 2015, she was appointed Minister of Employment, Vocational Training and Social Dialogue, replacing François Rebsamen who became Mayor of Dijon.
3.  On 11 February 2014, Audrey Azoulay was appointed as new Minister of Culture and communication replacing Fleur Pellerin.

Before trying to challenge if the purpose of joint appointments is to foster France’s relationships with Morocco, it seems appropriate to take a glance at these three Moroccan natives to distinguish their different backgrounds:

Najat Vallaud Belkacem: the youngest-ever French education minister
Second in a family of seven children, Najat Ballaud-Belkacem was born in 1977 in the Rif region of northern Morocco (Beni Chiker). She first came to France when she was four and it was there where she spent her childhood. After obtaining her French nationality at 18, she studied at France’s Institute of Political Science and worked as a jurist and active member of the French Socialist Party. In 2007 presidential elections, she was the spokesperson for Ségolène Royal. French President Hollande also gave her the same opportunity during the 2011 presidential elections. One of her least controversial achievement as Minister’s of Women’s Rights, was her gender equality law which promotes gender parity at home and in the workplace. However, since her appointment as Minister of Higher Education and Research, her plans to reform middle schools (end of European/bilingual classes) to provide more equal and pupils’ chances of success regardless of their backgrounds, have provoked the ire of the teaching community.

Myriam Khomri: the third labor minister since Hollande came to office in May 2012
Myriam El Khomri was born in Rabat in 1978 but spent part of her childhood in Tangier. She came to France when she was nine. After studying public law at Montesquieu university of Bordeaux and Pantheon-Sorbonne University, she was twice elected councilor at the Paris City Council and has also worked as spokesperson of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo during 2014 municipal elections.
On 26 August 2014, Myriam El Khmori was named Secretary of State to the Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sports, responsible for urban policy. Despite her limited government experience, she was appointed as labour minister in September 2015 to tackle and bring down the 10,2% France’s jobless rate. Myriam El Khomi is currently working on ambitious reforms that will profoundly change the French labor code and review the 35-hour working week. The reforms are to be presented to the French cabinet this coming March.

Audrey Azoulay: from Hollande’s cultural advisor to Minister of Culture and communication
Audrey Azoulay, 43, was born in 1972 in Essaouira. After studying at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and the National Administrative School, she was in charge of the audio-visual sector at the culture ministry’s media management team before becoming Assistant Director of the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC). Unlike to Fleur Pellerin whose background was mainly based on economics studies, Audrey Azoulay has acquired a wider knowledge of cultural matters through her various professional experiences. Let’s hope she will successfully tackle the debate over Pellerin’s culture bill related to the “liberty of creation, architecture and heritage,” that will be presented to the French senate next Tuesday for a vote.

While we can’t argue that choice of these new appointments aims at fostering the relationship between France and Morocco, it cannot be denied that these three Moroccan natives are playing a key role as representatives of France’s diversity, reality and the strength.
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179746/three-moroccan-natives-in-the-french-government/
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Morocco: A Competition of Successful Student Initiatives for Countering Violent Extremism Previewed at State Department Showcase
Blog By Jean R. Abinader Matic

The "Peer 2 Peer (P2P): Challenging Extremism" project, launched in spring 2015, is based on the premise that empowering student "experts" in reaching their peers was a critical strategy in efforts to combat extremist propaganda. The idea was simple - create a competition in which "Teams were tasked with developing campaigns and social media strategies against extremism that were credible, authentic, and believable to their peers and resonated within their communities," according to the program brochure. Last week we saw the results of the second P2P competition.

Who better to build this program than EdVenture Partners (EVP), which has been developing innovative industry-education partnership programs for more than 25 years? Their programs provide students with hands-on experience in finding solutions to real-world challenges. In fact, it was EVP that developed the "Brand Morocco" competition, which brought together schools in North America and Morocco to design marketing campaigns aimed at US companies to promote key sectors in Morocco.

As the danger of extremists manipulating social media to attract youth and the vulnerable has become a major concern of governments and NGOs, the need for a multifaceted counter-narrative became apparent. EVP, with its network of more than 800 schools, worked with several US government agencies to shape the P2P campaign, and it has been growing exponentially, attracting high visibility corporate partners such as Facebook. This year, teams from 45 universities in 17 different countries participated; the target for next semester is more than 100 universities in up to 40 countries.

How it Works
Working with their professors, student teams immerse themselves in the project casebook that is full of details on how to proceed, information on the project's objectives, and the anticipated end product. The teams then undertake research to define and better understand their target market and build a social media strategy to reach out and influence their peers.

Students receive a budget to produce an actual campaign, implement it, and measure the initial results - all within one semester. A key criterion is that the campaign can be duplicated and utilized elsewhere, so sustainability and scalability are critical.

The fall 2015 finalists were: Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan; the US Military Academy at West Point, New York; and the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. Honorable mentions included Alfaisal University in Saudi Arabia; New York University; Rochester Institute of Technology; University College London in the UK; University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Cincinnati; and the University of New Mexico.

And the Winners Are!
The team from Lahore won first prize on the back of their FATE campaign. FATE is short for "From Apathy to Empathy," focusing on the dangers of people become inured to violence when it is so overwhelming and part of their daily lives. Using their own country as the baseline, the students outlined the dangers of apathy across several dimensions, including weakening of religious tolerance, lack of awareness of options to counter violence in their communities, and the dehumanization of victims, who are treated as numbers.

The work they undertook was incredibly diverse and demanding: focus groups, media advertising, outreach to local schools and universities in Pakistan and the region, engaging experts, and mobilizing social media. You can check out their Facebook link at https://www.facebook.com/fromapathytoempathy/ for more details and descriptions of their outcomes to date. They also developed several hashtags, including #challengeextremism - which is a virtual poster campaign -- and #notjustanumber - aimed at students. An arts component has also been developed along with partnership with NGOs and other universities. With close to a half a million impressions on Facebook, reaching 380,000 people with close to 15,000 likes, they are off to a tremendous start.

The team of cadets from West Point, who came in second, had an innovative approach to reaching out to the target populations - attract them directly through social media using #Let'sTalkJihad. The campaign creates a home where young, restless, and searching youth can find out more about Islam, what's going on with others in their demographic, and be exposed to scholars and advocates and peers who can relate to them across a range of topics and interests. Their website, http://www.letstalkjihad.com/, guides the viewer through several options for discussion, discovery, and contemplation, giving them resources and contacts to enable them to talk about what's on their mind, in several languages, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Their presentation was quite polished, with anecdotes about the responses they are getting across the country, from "impressionable, at-risk youth" who access social media and the internet in search of answers. The target populations of Muslims and others who are in the middle -- that is, neither totally disengaged nor already committed to the message of militant jihad -- have been responding. They are being funneled to the website, which is creating a sense of community for young people to explore, ask, and learn from credible sources. In the few months since the site went active on Facebook, there have been 836,000 content views.

A very different approach was taken by the third-place finishers from Switzerland. They believe that if people are sensitized to the importance of preserving cultural heritage, they can be mobilized to protect endangered sites and artifacts. So their campaign, Faces4Heritage, www.faces4heritage.org, targets the one billion annual transnational tourists through various social media, to influence their perspectives and attract them to support initiatives to build peace through preservation.

The team found a ready ally in UNESCO, and they are partners in promoting protection and conservation of heritage sites. An innovative logo, which is half of an artifact that depicts a face, invites the reader to place their face in the other half of the logo - inspiring the message of "Faces for Heritage." Pointing out that heritage is a major part of our identity, their goal is to engage travelers, tourism professionals, and heritage leaders to denounce destruction of heritage sites. The campaign is also on Facebook and Twitter and is being supported by tourism associations, museums, public institutions, Wikipedia, cultural events, universities, and NGOs. They have developed an online course that is already heavily subscribed. To date, they have had 680,000 visitors on Facebook for 1.6 million impressions, and 575,000 Tweets to their hashtags.

Tony Sgro, founder of EVP, sees these projects, and the dozens more that were submitted, as significant proof of concept for the P2P program. "The results clearly show that using social media is a powerful tool to mobilize youth everywhere in the world, against extremism. The creativity, imagination, discipline, and passion behind these campaigns indicate how powerful this mobilization can be. Our goal of doubling the number of schools next semester and even more growth after will enable P2P to become a significant non-violent alternative to the extremists' message of hate."

Judges for the finalists' round of the competition were four government officials working in the fields of counterterrorism and public diplomacy, as well as Monika Bickert, Head of Product Policy at Facebook, and Jessica Stern of Boston' University's Pardee School of Global Studies. One fun anecdote - most of the finalists from overseas had never been to the US before so they were treated to a White House tour. As they were going through the halls, President Obama and Vice President Biden stopped and said hello. Selfies and smiles all around!
http://allafrica.com/stories/201602101002.html
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Reflections on the Moroccan Educational System: (Part 1: Pitfalls)
Monday 1 February 2016 - Mohamed Chtatou Rabat

Morocco is undoubtedly one of the few countries in the world that is spending over 25% of its yearly budget[1] on education and employing a true army of educators and functionaries in the sector but not reaching the expected results of equality, equity and quality.


The political will is definitely there, but the way, for some unknown reason, is lacking even after the implementation of a ten-year reform 2000-2009 initiated by the Special Committee on Education and Training (COSEF) through the National Charter for Education and Training (CNEF). This, sadly, proved to be, somewhat a flop, in the end, with the government indirectly attesting its failure by adopting an emergency plan to salvage the whole enterprise (2009-2011).
It goes without saying that Morocco with its establishment, political parties, forces in presence and the population, at large, want to see the educational system overhauled to become productive, at home, and competitive, on the world scene. The reason these well-intentioned reforms did not achieve the expected results are threefold:

• Objectives too numerous and too general: the COSEF reform approach was too spread out, too fuzzy and too ideological, a times, to achieve results;
• The reform failed to build within the system a viable evaluation scheme to guide the process and avoid potential pitfalls on the way; and
• The reform failed to identify, in the first place, the congenital ailments of the Moroccan educational system to lead the reform on the right path.

However, all is not gloomy, for the country has, in the meantime, achieved some important success in the EFA front, since the Dakar Conference of 2000, because the EFA goals were well-articulated and their implementation mechanism clearly outlined and equipped with the necessary evaluation devices.

Educational challenges of 2000
At the dawn of the third millennium, Morocco was in the grips of a grave educational crisis, the system in place failed to create the necessary responsible elites able to solve the problems of the country and chief among them: education. The existing elites entertained hypocritical discourse about national education. Publicly, they opted for an arabized system, but, in practice, they all sent their children to foreign educational institutions accredited in Morocco such as the French, Spanish and American schools and later on to European or American universities, for higher education.
The message was clear to the rank and file, the elites, from well-to-do families, were trained in foreign schools and came back to rule, whereas national schools formed menial workers and low-grade technicians, and universities, with generalist curriculum, jobless graduates condemned to demonstrate in front of the parliament on end.

The major endemic problem of this educational system is its deadly insularity and self-perpetuating philosophy, so the end result was much dissatisfaction and pain. The system, in its entirety seemed to be mediocre and unable to meet the expectations of the whole country. For many, education is one thing and harsh reality is another because the system in place was unable to link itself to the reality and requirements of the job market.
But, Morocco, yet in spite of the progress realized at the economic level, was still pulled down to the bottom by the weights of illiteracy. Indeed, the statistics of UNESCO, published in 2003,[2] showed a total of 51.2% illiterates nationwide: with 38.2% among the male population and 63.9% among the female. Among the age group of 15-24 the rate was 32.7%, at the national level, with 24% among the boys and 41.8 % among the girls. In this area, Morocco ranked 16th among 19 Arab countries and only came before Yemen, Mauritania and Iraq.

Shawn Magin, in a study entitled “Illiteracy in the Arab Region: A Meta Study,” published in 2010, states, quite rightly, that the root causes of high illiteracy in the Arab world are still unknown, but it is widely believed that various factors are accused of this plight. Some of these causes that apply to Morocco are as follows:

• The disconnect between literary Arabic, used as the medium of instruction in schools, and the various dialects of Arabic spoken;
• Poor pedagogical practices connected to the teaching in the Koranic schools ;
• Complication of the Arabic orthography because of the lack of vowel diacritics;
• Social reasons such as the prejudice against female students ;
• Economic reasons such as low economic status of parents and the lack of funding for schools ;
• School failure; and
• Children’s lack of exposure to literary Arabic before they begin school.

However, it must be pointed out, with much emphasis, that the problem of language is even more pronounced in Morocco because beside literary Arabic and colloquial dialects, there is, also, another more complex level between Tamazight and Arabic in its two formats. In Tamazight speaking areas, in all Atlas Mountains and in the Rif, many children dropped out of school into illiteracy because they found it difficult to learn a new language and follow the course at the same time.

Political pressures and international processes leading to the change
Pressure on the government to reform education came from various sides, be they national or international, on the grounds that the system in place is outdated and totally inadequate for a country that is aspiring to develop fast and become competitive on the international scene.
What was wrong with the system in the 80s and 90s of the last century?

The educational system was flawed, since independence, for the following reasons:

Archaic and outdated:
The educational system was inherited from the French Protectorate in the 20s of the last century. It was put in place to educate the children of the notables cooperating with the French colonial powers and to train and form functionaries for its administration, no more. When Morocco gained its independence in 1956, one of its sovereign decisions was to generalize education to all Moroccans and by so doing abrogate the colonial law that made it elitist. As such, important state funds where made available to the Ministry of National Education that embarked on an ambitious program of building schools and training teachers and “morocconizing” curriculum and school personnel. However, these changes did not concern the teaching methods and the philosophy of the system. The system aimed only at training people to become state functionaries, police and military, in general. As such, people sent their children to school, not to learn and become literate, but to get a job and a means of living. In this fashion, the state guaranteed explicitly every graduate, a job in the administration and the latter preferred this sector to the nascent private one because employment with the state is for life and no return is expected from the civil servant.

Koranic school pedagogy:
The whole educational system adopted a philosophy based on « blind obedience » which finds its origin in the religious realm. The learner is a disciple: “moored” and the teacher a master: “sheikh.” In this interesting relationship, the learner remains a learner in presence of his master even if he, ultimately, becomes himself a master. The parents, out of religious indoctrination, encouraged this patron-client system in the school: the teacher is always right, even if he is wrong, and the student has always to show obsequious obedience. The parents even went one step further in this imbalanced educational relationship and assured the master of their allegiance to his pedagogy by stating that he could well kill their son, if he resists his teachings, and they will, wholeheartedly, oblige to bury him without any contestation, whatsoever. Sadly this pedagogy, finding its origin in the dogmatic religious school of thought, produced obedient “subjects” and not responsible “citizens.” This educational system ultimately molded followers and not leaders and outlawed any form of critical reflection and sense of responsibility.

Feeding pedagogy:
The general approach in the Moroccan educational system is to feed the student information, have him digest it and on the day of the examination, regurgitate it. The teachers encouraged this controversial concept of: bida3atuna ruddat ilayna, meaning «our merchandise duly returned to us.» This system being an offshoot of the Koranic Pedagogy discouraged reflection, critical discussion and any form of personal initiative and sense of responsibility. All learners, whether in the primary, secondary or tertiary phases are considered « minors » and not adults, able of acceptable reflection and healthy thinking.

Authority first and foremost:
The whole educational system is based on the concept of authority: sulta ,and in this it is a mirror image of the political system. For the holders of this philosophy, any loss, at any time, of the educational process of this, leads to the loss of respect: hiba, and the total crumbling of the whole teaching process. The problem with this approach is not so much the authority but the fact that the instructor is always right, and cannot accept any form of questioning of his work. This entails two important and dangerous conclusions: the instructor is always right and there is, as such, no room for feedback and ultimately evaluation of the teacher and the system. The concept of evaluation for improvement is still today foreign to the Moroccan educational system and students are discouraged from evaluating their teachers, curriculum, teaching strategies and school administration.

Limited horizon:
In higher secondary, students were either sent to study “lettres” (liberal arts) or “science” (scientific subjects) and the choice is not theirs, but it is rather made by the school. After getting their baccalaureate, if they are good students and have excellent grades, they will recruited by the prestigious “Grandes Eccles,” if they are average, they will go to the public universities that offer all the same curriculum and are plagued by repetitive strikes, not for pedagogical matters, but for political reasons. Because of repetitive strikes students never complete their curriculum and by the time they graduate, unless they land a job with the state, the private sector shuns them.

Data vs skills:
The Moroccan educational system was flawed because it advocated cramming students’ heads with useless information and no skills or competencies, whatsoever. So by the time they graduate, they are unable to function and, as a result, their employability is jeopardized greatly.

Accessibility:
In the time of the Protectorate, the French divided Morocco into two zones: Maroc utile (Useful Morocco) and Maroc inutile (Useless Morocco). Useful Morocco was the rich agricultural plains that showed no resistance to French colonization, and Useless Morocco, the poor and less accessible mountain areas that opposed French colonization for two decades. So, the French privileged the plains at the expense of mountains. Thus, all the schools were built in the plains and only few in the mountains, which, after all, were reserved exclusively to the sons of Amazigh notables collaborating with the colonial powers. Consequently, some Moroccans had more ability and opportunity to learn than others, a situation that led to a high rate of illiteracy among the Amazigh people.

Alarming rate of illiteracy:
The lack of accessibility to education in mountainous and remote areas, led to a high rate of illiteracy in these areas and especially among girls and women. On independence, in 1956, King Mohammed V launched a vast campaign of literacy, all over the country, nicknamed nour (light). The response was very high, but unfortunately this campaign was suspended in 1963, when his son Hassan II became king. Critics and political opposition figures argue that this monarch, in his Machiavelli approach to power, declared to his aids that literacy is a bad thing for the regime because it produces challenging citizens, and he wants, instead, obedient subjects. If the campaign nour was allowed to continue, then, Morocco would have had a high rate of literate people today and this would have had a positive impact on society and on economy.

In 1982, after many years of severe drought, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, and, thus, appealed for help from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These international institutions lent money to the country, rescheduled its debts and imposed strict conditions on public spending, freezing the country’s hiring, liberalizing the economy and stopping subsidies on some food staples. This restructuring of public finance lasted almost a decade.
One of the most urgent reforms required by the international financial institutions was the immediate overhauling of the ailing educational system. In 1999, the king launched, in great fanfare, the Commission spéciale éducation-formation –COSEF- and declared the time period 2000-2009, the national decade of Moroccan educational reform. From the start, there were two problems with the make-up of this commission ; there were too many politicians in it, because the monarch wanted it to be a consensual tool to avoid taking blame alone in case of demise, and two few educators and pedagogues.

However, 5 years later the king received a secret report stating that the reform is plagued by many structural problems and might not achieve the expected results, after all. The weekly economic publication, La Vie Economique, in an article written by Aniss Maghri, on 15 July 2005 showed concerns at the probable failure of the reform, according to experts: Le Maroc serait-il en train de rater, encore une fois, la réforme de son système d’enseignement ? Lancée, il y a cinq ans, suite au travail colossal effectué par la Cosef (Commission spéciale éducation-formation), cette réforme, qui promettait de remettre sur les rails un secteur balloté depuis l’indépendance par des stratégies plus politiques que pragmatiques (l’arabisation en est l’exemple flagrant), a en grande partie échoué. On ne s’étonne donc pas que la confidentialité totale ait entouré le rapport-bilan que les membres de la commission ont remis au souverain, le 30 juin dernier. Un rapport explosif.

Bibliography:
Conseil Supérieur de l’Enseignement. 2008. Etat et Perspectives du Système d’Education et de Formation. Vol. 1. Réussir l’Ecole Pour Tous. Rabat: Rapport annuel 2008.
COSEF.1999. Charte Nationale de l’Education et de la Formation (CNEF).
Chtatou. M. 2010.  Mother Tongue in Education : the African Experience. Yamina El Kirat El Allame (ed), Globalization and Mother Tongues in Africa: Between Exclusion, Threat of Loss or Death and Revival and Maintenance Measures. Rabat, Université Mohammed V Agdal, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines
Ennaji, M. 2005. Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in Morocco. New York, Springer
Eickelman, D. F. 1992. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
MEN/UNESCO/UNICEF. 2001. Evaluation des conditions d’enseignement et d’apprentissage dans le premier cycle de l’enseignement fondamental. Education pour tous: Bilan à l’an 2000. Direction de l’évaluation du système éducatif. Secrétariat général. Ministère de l’Education Nationale. Rabat.
MEN/UNICEF. 2004. Les coûts de la non-scolarisation et de la déscolarisation. Rabat.
Royaume du Maroc. 2005. Rapport national sur les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement.
Sayeh, A. Y. 2013. The Impact Of Arabization On The Educational System In Morocco. Frankfurt,LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.
Tawil, S. 2006. “Quranic Education and Social Change in Northern Morocco: Perspectives from Chefchaouen“, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 50, 3: 496-517.
UNESCO. 2001. Programme d’appui au développement du premier cycle de l’enseignement fondamental marocain (700/MOR/13). Rapport d’évaluation externe.
Wagner, D. A. 1994. Literacy, Culture and Development: Becoming Literate in Morocco. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
[1]United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics.; UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Source tables
[2] UNESCO. Literacy and Adult Education in the Arab World: Regional Report for the CONFINTEA V, Mid-Term Review Conference. (Bangkok, September 2003), 12.
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/178770/reflections-on-the-moroccan-educational-system-part-1-pitfalls/
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Reflections on the Moroccan Educational System: (Part 2: Challenges Overcome)
Thursday 11 February 2016 - Mohamed Chtatou

Challenges and pitfalls overcome
As a follow-up to the World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990), the world community convened in Dakar, in 2000, in a world conference on the theme of “Education For All” (EFA), to review the achievements of Jomtien and launch an ambitious program for the period 2000-2015, centering on the following lofty goals:
Goal 1: Expand early childhood care and education;
Goal 2: Provide free and compulsory primary education for all;
Goal 3: Promote learning and life skills for young people and adults;
Goal 4: Increase adult literacy by 50 percent;
Goal 5: Achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015; and
Goal 6: Improve the quality of education.

Pre-education:
On the pre-school front, the Koranic schools scattered all over the country, and generally attached to mosques offered literacy and numeracy curriculum to children of 3-6 years, prior to registering into government schools for primary education. The teaching is insured by the muezzin (the religious man responsible for prayer calls and maintenance of the mosque). These men did, undoubtedly, a great job in spite of the fact that they had no pedagogical training and received no pay from the state. After 2000, the government, through the Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs, embarked on an ambitious program to rehabilitate Koranic schools and provide administrative status to the men in charge of them.

At the same time, the Ministry of National Education, enacted laws to encourage the private sector to expand pre-school through the kindergarten system and, since, these institutions have mushroomed all over the country, and this is, undoubtedly, a good and encouraging sign for strengthening general education.
However, the government has to meet, in the coming decade, the challenge of generalizing this type of education, especially in rural areas, through an ambitious program of modernization of Koranic schools, training their personnel and providing much-needed educational material. It must be stressed that Koranic schools play, as in the past, an important role in providing literacy and preparing rural children for general education.

The gross enrolment rate (GRE) has been on the increase since 2000 and especially among the females[1] and this is a very good sign that ought to encourage the government to come up with an ambitious national pre-education generalization program for the decade 2015-2024.

Generalization of primary free education:
After independence, the Moroccan government put as priority, for development, the sector of education with four main goals: generalization, morrocanization, arabization and unification. After many decades, it was able to achieve all except generalization because of the rapid population growth and the lack of financial means. However, there was, then, gender inequality, whereby families favored sending boys to school and keeping girls to work at home and wait for the husband to show up at the door step. There was also geographic inequality whereby, the center was favored at the expense of the periphery; this led to massive migration of youth to Europe from 1960 to 1982 and to America and the Gulf states from 1982 until recently.

According to the specialized website: Researching virtual Initiatives in Education, the results achieved by the generalization of education are excellent:
The gross enrollment rates (GER) at the primary level have been consistently rising in 2000s. In 2007 the total GER at the primary level was 107.4 percent, with 112 percent for males and 101 percent for females. But the Gender parity Index for GER was 0.89, which shows that the issue of gender inequality persists at the primary level.   
       
After the Dakar Conference of 2000, Morocco made a great effort to generalize access to education by building more schools in rural areas and providing teachers, but the most important measures undertaken that made a difference are:

• Providing grants to poor families to keep their kids in school; and
• Building numerous dormitories, especially dar taliba for females coming from distant rural areas and providing them with full board and pedagogical supervision.

These two important decisions proved to be extremely important in generalizing education, so, maybe, the government can do more of the same in the future.

Promoting learning and life skills:
There are thousands of NGOs countrywide, and especially in the countryside, fully engaged in providing assistance to poor people. The very good thing about these development associations is that they are homespun; know the economic hardships of the local society and most of all speak local idioms: Tamazight, colloquial Arabic or Hssani Arabic dialect. These communication skills allow them two things: firstly, to have the ability to talk easily to the population and, secondly, and most importantly, relate to them to gain their confidence and trust, which is, by far, the most important criteria for success, bearing in mind that the rural population mistrusts government moves, for one reason or another.

These NGOs have been extremely successful in undertaking functional literacy: teaching population literacy and numeracy and, after that, technical skills to start up a cooperative to make money and alleviate poverty. These cooperatives have been extremely useful financially to help poor families get an income, and especially women, head of monoparental families, to sustain their children.

The government aware of the tremendous work of local associations has created in the actual structure of its ministries, one devoted to civil society that came up with a charter and held its first national conference in June 2014 to discuss ways to finance NGOs and facilitate their work.

Increasing adult literacy:
Adult literacy is an area where the government has been extremely helpless, while, even the poorest countries in Africa have achieved resounding success; Morocco’s results remain very humble. According to the website statistiques.mondiales.com, the rate of literacy of 15+ is 56.1%, in 2010. The problem being that, up to now, the government has been unable to spell out a clear policy in this area. First, there was a department in charge of this important matter within the gigantic Ministry of National Education. Then, there was ministry devoted to literacy proper, but actually the ministry was not created for purely academic and technical reasons, but just to provide an extra ministerial position to a political party in the majority.
The failure of government action in this area can be easily attributed to the following reasons:

• Lack of a national program comprising : primary and secondary objectives, expected results, implementation tools, timed activities and an independent evaluation scheme;
• Need to hire literacy specialists to undertake the program and ban ministry functionaries from making educational and technical decisions; and
• Necessity to provide the needed funds.

However, where the Ministry of National Education failed, the Ministry of Waqf and Islamic Affairs has achieved a tremendous success, especially among women, by using available mosque structures for much-needed literacy programs.

Gender parity and equality:
In a Muslim country, to achieve gender parity and equality, especially at a time when there is a rise of religious fundamentalism and social conservatism, is undoubtedly quite a challenge.
But, Morocco seems to be in the right position because of its political set up that makes of the king the highest religious authority in the country: amir al mu’minin « Commander of the Faithful », and whose influence is predominant.
One important indicator of future gender parity and equality is the predominance of females in secondary schools and universities. This might not be a fail proof argument but it is an important trend.
In the countryside, the government has been successful in convincing families through grants to keep their daughters in schools and, also, by building female dormitories dar taliba to accommodate rural girls of poor background and encourage their families to let them pursue their education.

Quality education:
The reform of the decade of education 2000-2009, initiated by COSEF, might not have achieved all its expected results, but it has certainly put the emphasis on the need for quality education. Now, most of the public educational institutions are certainly aspiring to achieve quality education. The will is certainly there, but what is badly needed is the way, and the government has to come up with the way in question.
But quality is, also, pertinence of content in school programs and teaching methods, stated indirectly by Sobhi Tawil, Sophie Cerbelle and Amapola Alama, in their insightful work:Au-delà du vieux défi d’élargir l’accès et de combler les inégalités d’apprentissage, la crise du système éducatif marocain est à présent plus fréquemment énoncée en termes de « crise de contenu » et de nécessité d’améliorer la qualité des résultats scolaires, à travers l’introduction de contenus et de méthodes plus pertinents. De nouveaux programmes et manuels scolaires basés sur l’approche par les compétences ont été développés aux niveaux du primaire et du secondaire 1er degré, intégrant des principes relevant des droits de l’Homme et éliminant, dans une large mesure, les contenus biaisés, en particulier ceux se rapportant au genre.

It goes without saying that the best way to achieve quality education is by building within the educational system a permanent evaluation mechanism operated fully by an independent body, and whose results and conclusions ought to be implemented by government authorities. Independent evaluation has to become an established culture and the implementation of its teachings an obligatory action.

To achieve fully quality education, the government has to use incentive such as prizes awarded to institutions and cash handouts to individuals.
Alongside, it has to encourage academic research to come up with homespun strategies to improve quality.

Conclusion: remaining challenges
All in all, It must be said that Morocco is, undoubtedly, a somewhat success story in initiating and achieving the EFA goals set up by the Dakar conference of 2000 and adhering closely and faithfully to the philosophy of such lofty objectives. The political willingness of the government is there, what is needed is the best way capable of making the necessary changes, bearing in mind, obviously, the anthropological make up of the country, the sociological construct and the religious beliefs.

Morocco, is certainly on the right track of the EFA philosophy and culture, it only has to persevere in this direction and strive to achieve more in the years to come, with the same level of political willingness and positive dedication.

Morocco, is, also, called upon to strengthen further the EFA culture among the political elite: decision makers, ministers, political parties, and trade unions and associate intellectuals, thinkers, religious scholars and civil society in its environment.

Morocco, has, definitely, to work very hard on the level of quality and evaluation, and this can be attained only if the actors entrusted are among the best: a teacher who is assured of employment for life will certainly do nothing to give the best of himself to the job, this has to come to an end and, at the same time, good teachers have to be rewarded to give them incentive.

It goes without saying that gender parity and equality is not an easy job to achieve. There must be, first, adequate anthropological and sociological research to determine the obstacles and hurdles and the religious impediments, if any. Afterwards, viable strategies can be set up and implemented with the help and supervision of experts and religious scholars.

Also, the government has to continue, with the same force and dedication, to generalize access to education and literacy programs and ought to consider providing school transportation in rural areas to bring schools within the reach of pupils there, bearing in mind that many drop out of school because of problems of proximity.

Bibliography
Conseil Supérieur de l’Enseignement. 2008. Etat et Perspectives du Système d’Education et de Formation. Vol. 1. Réussir l’Ecole Pour Tous. Rabat : Rapport annuel 2008.
COSEF.1999. Charte Nationale de l’Education et de la Formation (CNEF).
Chtatou. M. 2010.  Mother Tongue in Education: the African Experience. Yamina El Kirat El Allame (ed), Globalization and Mother Tongues in Africa: Between Exclusion, Threat of Loss or Death and Revival and Maintenance Measures. Rabat, Université Mohammed V Agdal, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines
Ennaji, M. 2005. Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in Morocco. New
York,Springer
Eickelman, D. F. 1992. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
MEN/UNESCO/UNICEF. 2001. Evaluation des conditions d’enseignement et d’apprentissage dans le premier cycle de l’enseignement fondamental. Education pour tous : Bilan à l’an 2000. Direction de l’évaluation du système éducatif. Secrétariat général. Ministère de l’Education Nationale. Rabat.
MEN/UNICEF. 2004. Les coûts de la non-scolarisation et de la déscolarisation. Rabat.
Royaume du Maroc. 2005. Rapport national sur les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement.
Sayeh, A. Y. 2013. The Impact Of Arabization On The Educational System In Morocco. Frankfurt, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.
Tawil, S. 2006. “Quranic Education and Social Change in Northern Morocco: Perspectives from Chefchaouen“, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 50, 3: 496-517.
UNESCO. 2001. Programme d’appui au développement du premier cycle de l’enseignement fondamental marocain (700/MOR/13). Rapport d’évaluation externe.
Wagner, D. A. 1994. Literacy, Culture and Development: Becoming Literate in Morocco. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
[1]UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2008
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Morocco Represented in New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival
Saturday 6 February 2016 - morocco world news Rabat

Morocco will be represented in the New York Sephardic Film Festival scheduled to take place next March. The 19th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival will take place from March 10th through the 17th at the Center for Jewish History in New York City (15 West 16th Street). The seven-day event is organized by the American Sephardi Federation.

It aims to shed light on Jewish culture from the Middle East and Sephardic Diaspora in order to provide the viewers with historical background about their ways of life. The festival will include intriguing stories, poignant documentaries, and movie screenings that reflect Jewsish history and traditions.

One such film is “Shattered Rhymes” by director Sami Shalom-Chetrit, screening on March 14th. The movie is based on Algerian-born Moroccan-Israeli poet Erez Bittion’s work, which showcase the cultural, social, and political experience of Moroccan Jews and other immigrants.

It will also screen a movie entitled “A Song of Loves” by Rafael Balulu. It sheds light on Moroccan-born poet Rabbi David Buzaglo’s life, who is considered as the greatest Hebrew liturgical poet of the 20th century. The film’s screenplay is based on an extract from Buzaglo’s biography and his experiences during the Diaspora.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179233/morocco-represented-in-new-york-sephardic-jewish-film-festival/
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Keeping the ‘tree of life’ alive: The key to preserving a unique ecological and economic resource is environmental education. Schoolchildren in Morocco start with the local argan tree
Sat, Feb 6, 2016, Paddy Woodworth    
 
We often don’t notice what’s in front of our noses. And it’s in that failure to pay attention to the obvious and ubiquitous – until it’s gone – that many of our environmental problems are rooted.

The landscape as you travel from Essaouira to Agadir, parallel to Morocco’s Atlantic coast, is unique and certainly eye catching. For much of the journey a semi-natural savannah, dominated almost entirely by argan trees, stretches as far as the eye can see.

In a dry winter, like this one, the ground is mostly bare of other plants, and the deep green foliage of the scattered trees contrasts vividly with the burnt ochre of the soil. They look as though they are growing in a desert. They almost are.

The argan, which they call the tree of life, is native only to this region. It rarely prospers if transplanted elsewhere. Which is one reason the edible oil its nuts produce is currently the most highly priced in the world. Berbers have exploited argan oil for its culinary, cosmetic and medicinal benefits for many centuries. With its dark, nutty flavour, it has become an ultrachic international alternative to olive oil; stars like Madonna rave about its “anti-ageing” properties in skin creams.

Ageing argan
The argan ages pretty well itself: it is one of the oldest existing tree species, evolving some 80,000 years ago. Individuals are survivors as well: some produce fruit for up to 200 years.

It’s a tree of life for another reason. The argan forest is the last green ecosystem before the Sahara, “the limit of desertification in our country,” in the words of Houssaine Aitzaouit, who runs an environmental-education programme for children in Smimou, south of Essaouira.

The argan’s roots can bore down 70m to find water. They stabilise the soil, making the tree literally the foundation species for all other life in the forest. In spring and summer, flowering plants carpet the ground nourished by its leaf litter; its branches offer habitat to birds, mammals, reptiles and insects.
Yet, despite the argan tree’s local ubiquity and useful products, Aitzaouit repeatedly finds that schoolchildren coming to Smimou from urban areas rarely recognise it. They have not even noticed it en route. Just as some Irish children think milk comes from a Tetra Pak factory, Moroccan children think their cooking oil comes from plastic bottles.

“Often, when I show them 10 plants that grow in the region today, the only one they can name is the prickly-pear cactus, which comes from Mexico,” he says. “They don’t see so much of what is in front of their eyes.”

By the time they get back on the bus home Aitzaouit has done his utmost to refocus their attention. He has few material resources – his displays are painstakingly home made, not touch screen. But he has energy and imagination to burn, and finds a dozen ways to engage the children with the natural world.
He starts outside, dividing them into small groups. He names each one “mountain”, eagle”, “tree” and so on, challenging each group to tell the others something about what they do in the world.

Then comes the plant-recognition test, after which he himself becomes the argan tree’s spokesman. He stands under its branches and produces a series of signs through which he explains its ecological functions.

“I give you fuel” and “I give you oil” are fairly obvious openers, but the children are more surprised, and puzzled, by such lines as “My thorns protect birds’ nests” or “My flowers feed bees.”“I want to get them thinking about relationships in nature,” he says, “and their importance to us, to understand that birds eat many of the insects that damage our crops. You have to pay for pesticides, but birds are free – if we do not persecute them. But other insects are vital to farmers as pollinators.”

Social system
The exploitation of the forest is based on a complex social system, Aitzaouit says. Some of it is privately owned, but most of it is common land, open to collective grazing and browsing. The valuable right to harvest the nuts from particular trees is usually based not on ownership, as such, but on custom and practice linked to specific families.

Traditionally, the Berbers have understood that the most sustainable (and easiest) way to gather the nuts and do the least damage to the tree is to wait until they fall to the ground. But the increasing tendency is to harvest too early, beating the fruit aggressively out of the trees, because nuts lying on the ground can readily be stolen.

Almost half the forest has vanished in the past century, and the tree density of the remainder has declined by 70 per cent. The biggest threats in the past were charcoal production and attempts to convert the land to cultivation.

Today the biggest menace is thought to be overbrowsing, as goat herds expand (see panel). Limited browsing does little damage, and probably promotes new growth. But watching a herd of goats flow through an argan grove, swarming up any horizontal branches, is scarily like watching locusts consume a crop field.
Aitzaouit believes this problem is also exacerbated by climate change. Goats normally prefer grazing ground plants to browsing trees. But a series of exceptionally dry winters means that for several months no ground plants are available.

And so the forces driving degradation in the argan forest are both local and global – and interlinked. It will be challenging to conserve this special natural heritage for another century. But encouraging children to notice it is an essential starting point.

Aitzaouit wants the children to feel proud that this unique tree flourishes in their country and, through that, to realise their responsibility for conserving the argan forest – “for all humanity”, as Unesco has declared the region a Biosphere Reserve. The argan tree’s last line is always the same: “My only homeland is Morocco. ”

Win-win? ‘Commercialise to conserve’ strategy
What we consume has environmental and social impacts elsewhere. If you buy argan oil or cosmetics in Ireland, for example, are you harming or helping the argan forest and people of Morocco? The argan-oil boom has been closely linked with a market-based conservation strategy that could be summed up as “commercialise to conserve”.

It is based on the notion of a win-win outcome: poor rural communities benefit from the sustainable exploitation of a natural resource, incentivising them to protect and restore the ecosystem. Travis Lybbert of the University of California, Davis, working with Moroccan colleagues, has researched the impact of the oil boom on the argan region over 10 years. His findings: some rural families have benefited, but outsiders benefit more. Conservation of mature argan trees has often improved, but the boom does not incentivise reforestation. Instead families tend to invest profits in increasing their goat herds.

It seems the market can complement conservation measures. But it is not a replacement for institutional support, research investment and science-based regulation.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/keeping-the-tree-of-life-alive-1.2520946
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Moroccan Economy Created Just 33,000 New Jobs Between 2014 and 2015.
Friday 5 February 2016 - morocco world news Rabat

Despite the efforts made by the Moroccan government in recent years to offer more employment opportunities to young Moroccans, it fell short of achieving its goals. Between the years 2014 and 2015, the Moroccan economy created 33,000 employment positions, according to a briefing note from the Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP).

According to the same source, 29,000 jobs were created in urban areas and 4,000 in rural areas, compared to 21,000 a year earlier. The services sector generated 32,000 jobs, construction created 18,000 jobs and industry, including handicrafts, added 15,000 jobs. The agriculture, forestry and fishing industries lost 32,000 total jobs.

Unemployment fell by 19,000 people, 10,000 in urban areas and 9,000 in rural areas, bringing the total volume of unemployed people to 1.148 million at the national level, which corresponds to a decrease of 1.6 percent over the previous year.

Given the evolution of the labor force, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.9 percent to 9.7 percent nationally, 14.8 percent to 14.6 percent in urban areas and 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent in rural areas. Among men, it dropped from 9.7 percent to 9.4 percent and among women it rose from 10.4% to 10.5%. The unemployment rate of people without diplomas dropped from 4.7 percent to 4.1 percent while the percentage of unemployed graduates has increased from 17.2 percent to 17.3 percent.

In addition, the rate of underemployment, increased by 0.5 percentage points from 10.3 percent to 10.8 percent at the national level. It went from 9.5 percent to 9.9 percent in urban areas and from 11.2 percent to 11.8 percent in rural areas.

Starting this year, the HCP included new indicators on the quality of the workforce, including data about those with excessive working hours and the proportion of young people aged 15 to 24 who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEETs), as defined by the International Labour Office.

In 2015, the number of employed who have had excessive working hours stood at 41.4 percent at the national level, 46.9 percent in urban areas and 35.9 percent in rural areas. The proportion of young NEETs aged 15 to 24 reached 27.9 percent at the national level, 45.1 percent among young women and 11.4 percent among young men.
Edited by Kelsey Fish
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179112/moroccan-economy-created-just-33000-new-jobs-between-2014-and-2015/
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Morocco's official jobless rate slips to 9.7 pct in 2015
Fri Feb 5, 2016 RABAT Feb 5 (Reuters)

Growth in service and construction industries pushed Morocco's unemployment rate down to 9.7 percent last year from 9.9 percent in 2014, according to official figures released on Friday.

Services and construction created 32,000 and 18,000 jobs respectively, while manufacturing industry created 15,000 jobs, Morocco's planning agency said in a statement.

The government has been developing manufacturing industries in areas such as car and aerospace parts and electronic components to cut reliance on agriculture and create more jobs in its crowded big cities.

The labour-intensive farming sector, which accounts for up to 17 percent of Morocco's gross domestic product and employs more than the half its workforce, lost around 15,000 jobs in 2015.

With drought looming, the sector is expected to lose more jobs in 2016, putting further pressure on the government, which is already facing protests over austerity measures.

Informal labour abounds in Morocco, making it hard to produce reliable employment figures.

The Finance Ministry has forecast the economy will grow this year by 3 percent, slowing from 4.4 percent in 2015. However, the planning agency said drought would drag growth down to 1.3 percent in 2016.
(Reporting By Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
http://af.reuters.com/article/moroccoNews/idAFL8N15K1NV
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Morocco launches first solar power plant 
OUARZAZATE, Morocco:

King Mohammad VI Thursday inaugurated Morocco’s first solar power plant, a massive project that the country sees as part of its goal of boosting its clean energy output. Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and French Environment Minister Segolene Royal were among local and foreign officials who attended the opening on the edge of the Sahara desert, around 20 kilometers outside Ouarzazate.

Royal said the project gave “great hope to all countries with a lot of sun and desert” who could use solar panels to produce electricity. “The solar plant underlines the country’s determination to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, use more renewable energy, and move toward low carbon development,” its developers said in a statement.

With a production capacity of 160 megawatts, Noor 1 is supposed to allow Morocco to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The project’s next phases – Noor 2 and Noor 3 – are to follow this year and next, and a call for tenders is open for Noor 4. Once all phases are complete, it is to be “the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world” and will produce 500 megawatts of electricity, providing power to more than 1 million Moroccans by 2018 and reduce Morocco’s carbon emissions by 760,000 tons per year, they added. This is equivalent to about 1 percent of Morocco’s CO2 emissions of around 56.5 million tons in 2011, according to World Bank figures.

Morocco has scarce oil and gas reserves, and is the biggest importer of energy in the Middle East and North Africa.

The solar plant’s launch comes as Morocco seeks to raise its renewable energy production to move beyond this heavy dependency and face growing electricity consumption set to quadruple by 2030.

The country started producing electricity at Africa’s largest wind farm in its southwestern coastal region of Tarfaya last year.

Morocco, to host next year’s world climate change conference, aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent by 2030.

Morocco launched construction of Noor 1 in 2013, at a cost of 600 million euros ($660 million) and involving roughly 1,000 workers. A consortium led by Saudi developer ACWA Power won the contract. African Development Bank, European Investment Bank and World Bank are funding the project.
https://www.dailystar.com.lb/Business/Regional/2016/Feb-06/335906-morocco-launches-first-solar-power-plant.ashx
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Casablanca Goes Native in ‘Midnight Orchestra’
By Jewish TimesFebruary 5, 2016 By Bob Bahr

Captain Renault (Claude Rains): What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick (Humphrey Bogart): My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
“The Midnight Orchestra” stars Aziz Dadas (left) as Ali and Avishay Benazra as Michael.
Rick: I was misinformed.
Not only was Bogart misinformed, but in “Casablanca,” the 1942 Hollywood classic, so were the screenwriters. They evidently forgot, for the sake of a witty line, that Casablanca was not a desert outpost somewhere in the Sahara, but a great Moroccan city on the Mediterranean. The waters, as Renault should have known, were everywhere.

But waters, schmaters, who cared in 1940s Hollywood exactly where Casablanca was?
Everyone knew it was, after all, nothing more than a flimsy set on the back lot at Warner Bros. And the only thing that mattered was where Casablanca was in our imagination.

Almost 75 years after the premiere of Hollywood’s Casablanca, a Moroccan film, “The Midnight Orchestra,” takes us back to Casablanca to examine the power the city exerts on the imagination. Only this time the story is about Moroccans, both Jews and Muslims, and how the city, its culture and even the waters have shaped their lives.

Michael Botbol, played by the Jewish Moroccan actor Avishay Benazra, is a successful Wall Street speculator who comes back from New York to the city of his birth. He is hoping to repair the fractured relationship he has with his father, Marcel, a famous Moroccan Jewish musician, who has also returned to the city after many years abroad.

Their return home — indeed, their universal story of return and remembrance — lies at the heart of the film, whose U.S. premiere is at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

For 2,000 years Jews have gone to Morocco, first as refugees from the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and later as victims of Christian and Muslim persecution. Life there was not always easy, and the relationships with their non-Jewish neighbors have had ups and downs. But by the 20th century Moroccan Jews had become an integral part of the culture of the country. Today the king even has an influential Jewish adviser.

The funeral of Marcel helps bring together the members of his old band in “The Midnight Orchestra.”

When I spoke recently with the Jewish director of “The Midnight Orchestra,” Jerome Cohen-Olivar, who lives and works in Casablanca, he talked about how well he gets along there. “My best friends are Muslims. There is this strong friendship and this brotherhood that exists between Jews and Muslims. In my own case my friendship with Muslims is sometimes stronger than my relationship with other Jews.”

To partially finance the film, the government-supported Moroccan Film Production Center lent the production $600,000. That doesn’t sound like much by American standards, but this film, made by Jews about Jews, received more government support than any other Moroccan film in history.

In Casablanca, where the film premiered late last year, it’s a big success. Cohen-Olivar, who wrote the script as well as directed, said: “It’s a cultural phenomenon. It’s been in theaters for 14 weeks. It’s a huge hit. People love it. And the people who like it the most are Muslim religious people.”
But if Morocco has come to terms with its Jews and they have full rights as citizens, it has been too little, too late for many.

At its peak, the Moroccan Jewish community numbered over 300,000, the largest in the Arab world. Only about 2,500 Jews remain. As Cohen-Olivar put it, “They are only like a drop of water in the ocean.” A strong Islamic nationalist movement, the threat of violence and a major program by the Israeli government to support aliyah led to mass immigration. Many went to Israel, where Moroccan Jews number over 1 million; others to France, Canada and the United States.
But a Morocco without Jews doesn’t mean a Morocco without a Jewish memory. Wherever Jews have gone, whatever success they have achieved elsewhere, “The Midnight Orchestra seems to say,” the country they left remains deeply embedded in their collective memory.

“You scratch the surface and Morocco comes back,” Cohen-Olivar said. “It’s crazy. It gives rise to a lot of depression and neurosis because to alter your identity is very hard. I tried doing it when I went to the United States to study, and it was very hard.”

And so it is with Michael Botbol, who returns to Morocco only to see his father die soon after. To honor his father’s memory and the memory of a culture he had tried to forget, he reassembles his father’s old orchestra of Muslim musicians. The reunion is made more difficult because the musicians have become estranged in the many years since they gave their last performance.

But Michael bridges the differences to heal the wounds, imagined and otherwise, and create harmony again between Muslims and Jews. They reassemble for a final bittersweet moment at the father’s burial. “Music is what brings them together,” Cohen-Olivar said, “but that’s really just a metaphor for a people who have been deprived of so much.”
After the festival Bob Bahr is teaching a six-week course, “Fitting In: A Short History of Jewish Film in America,” sponsored by the AJFF and the Breman Museum. It begins Wednesday, Feb. 24, at The Temple (the-temple.org).
http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2016/02/casablanca-goes-native-in-midnight-orchestra/
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Where does Morocco stand today, five years after the Arab uprisings? Nizar Baraka—President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Morocco and the chair of the Economic Working Group of the U.S.-Morocco Strategic Dialogue—provided a snapshot at a Center for Middle East Policy discussion on February 3.

While Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt are more frequently referenced in discussions about the 2011 Arab uprisings and their aftermath, Baraka stressed that the political and social changes in Morocco should not be overlooked. He emphasized the importance of the July 2011 constitution, which puts Morocco’s citizens at the “heart of all we do.” The new constitution reinforces regional representative councils, gives more power to the parliament, and strengthens the voice of civil society. 

Another crucial component of the 2011 reforms— which was the focus of Baraka’s talk at Brookings—is the Moroccan government’s ongoing process of “advanced regionalization,” which began in earnest in 2015 with Morocco’s first direct local and municipal elections. The new constitution made way for a “real revolution in institutions” by devolving power from the national government to regional and municipal authorities. Baraka emphasized that civil society representatives from the private sector, trade unions, NGOs, and other groups inform this process. He said that the regionalization process seeks to address three challenges:

• Bringing decision-making closer to the citizens: Regionalization will promote local participation in governance, Baraka said. When democratic reforms were undertaken in the 1990s, he explained, the state lacked credibility. People did not know who was making decisions. Now he believes that the people themselves are central to the process. 
• Reducing disparities between regions: Economic activity, job opportunities, and services delivery vary greatly between regions. As Baraka pointed out, four of Morocco’s 12 provinces account for approximately 50 percent of GDP, and about 50 percent of Morocco’s doctors work in two of the 12 provinces. 
• Creating public policies that respond to citizens’ needs: Currently, government departments are siloed, hindering effectiveness. Further regionalization can enhance coherence and effectiveness of government services. 

Baraka spoke extensively about the Southern Provinces, the term the Moroccan government uses to refer to the disputed Western Sahara, as a pilot for development across the country. While negotiations on the 2007 autonomy proposal have stalled, regionalization should provide much-needed socio-economic development in the Southern Provinces, independent of the United Nations process. 

The new constitution made way for a “real revolution in institutions” by devolving power from the national government to regional and municipal authorities.
In the Southern Provinces, the government is a main economic actor and largest job provider. Baraka acknowledged that there are currently no real incentives for the local private sector to invest there, but added Moroccan companies are becoming interested as a result of the government’s plans for regional development. As the Council made clear in its October 2013 report on the New Development Model for the Southern Provinces, the region’s rent-based economy is being replaced by a competitive economy boosted by private investment.

Economic diversification will encourage other African countries to import from the Southern Provinces, further improving the economic situation there and strengthening ties between Morocco and its southern neighbors, a key goal of the Moroccan central government. Specialized schools for management and medicine are slated to open, along with infrastructure investment for transportation, electrification, and digital connectivity, that will benefit not just this region but also several Sub-Saharan African countries. 

Morocco is committed to several other projects devoted to African development: 

• Food security: As a phosphate-rich country, Morocco built a fertilizer plant dedicated to sell to the African market. 
• Energy (especially renewable): Morocco built a solar plant in Benin and has pledged to provide technical assistance and more there. 
• Including countries in the value-added chain: For example, many students from Sub-Saharan Africa have come to study in Morocco, and many on Moroccan-sponsored scholarships. 

He also spoke about the successful export of Morocco’s imam training program, which fights radicalism, to the Sahel. 
On the global scale, Morocco can help foster relations between the United States, the Gulf, and Arab countries on the one hand and Morocco’s African neighbors on the other. Regionalization will also help reduce vulnerability to global pressures. By improving relations with countries to the south, the impact of Europe’s weakening economies will be reduced. The U.S.-Morocco economic relationship is also growing.
In addition to government resources devoted to the advanced regionalization process as a whole, the Southern Provinces are receiving additional funding. In ten years, Baraka said, “we can double the region’s GDP and reduce the level of unemployment by 50 percent.”

Baraka is convinced that his country has the will and the capacities to implement an “original vision to create competitive development centers in every region.” Take the emigration problem, for example; in the 1990s, many Moroccans (especially from the north) left for Europe, primarily for economic opportunities. To stem the flow and create jobs, the Tangier port was built up and the city is now home to the highly-productive Renault car plant. 
[R]egionalization can help make democracy more present in people’s lives.

Even so, many are skeptical about whether development will bring about democratization; and some question the sincerity of Morocco’s dedication to democratization in the first place. Baraka said that those who do not believe Morocco is truly committed to democratization are simply not looking hard enough, adding that the improvements are in the details. For example, now all laws go directly from the council of governments to parliament, rather than going through the king before reaching parliament. In Baraka’s view, democracy is important to Morocco first and foremost because it is the only way to truly involve the people, and regionalization can help make democracy more present in people’s lives. After all, local elections see higher turnout than state legislative ones. He advocated the development of more political parties to counter the trend of populism. In his own Istiqlal Party, he admitted that the leadership’s emphasis on populism doesn’t quite align with the people’s vision of the party. 

In a particularly upbeat moment during his talk, Baraka explained that, in response to strong public opinion on the issue, parliament member pensions will no longer receive state contribution. We have public opinion and we take it into account—“that’s democracy!” he said.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/02/05-regionalization-democratization-morocco-borden
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Exploring the beauty of Morocco by bike
READER REPORT: DAVE MONK February 5 2016

Dave and his family have enjoyed a unique Moroccan experience.

In Morocco tour cyclists sit somewhere between camel riders and road vendors. Actually no. Road vendors - with their large flat cumbersome trolleys laden with fresh fruit- actually get right of way from cars.

That's when the road exists.  Often, seemingly 'normal' main roads crumble away to nothing, revealing the coarse gravel and dust beneath like an infected wound; but as a tour cyclist this does nothing to deter from the joy of travelling. It simply adds to it.

We're a family of cyclists. We've cranked our way across our homeland of New Zealand and rolled from the Atlantic to the Black Sea through Europe; but nothing we've ever done on a bike before, is even remotely comparable to the adventures (and challenges) we've faced in North Africa with its impoverished settlements, crumbling white buildings and broken roads.

Not far from the tourist route farmers work beneath a baking winter sun. Sickle in hand, their large numbers gather in winter harvests of parsley and any number of other legumes grown along the Mediterranean's fertile crescent -There are no tractors here; horse and cart rule the fields.

As tour cyclists, this too is where the best Moroccan experiences can be found. The welcoming waves of farmers as they call us over to enjoy a fresh sweet mint chai, before wishing bon-voyage for our remaining trip.

It's where you can stop for a packed lunch of bread and avocado, only to have a plate of couscous and vegetables delivered to your bike, by people you've never met before, and probably never will again. 

It's where friendly locals helped to fix one of our bikes' snapped rear axles using an antiquated welding machine, before flatly refusing payment. Their only request: we enjoy their country.

Traversing the back roads we've met everyday Moroccans who have opened their doors and lives to us, complete foreigners, inviting us into their world; sharing evening meals they call Tajines, tending their cows to offer fresh milk, and heating up buckets of water over a fire pit, so we may enjoy a refreshingly warm (ladled) shower - Paradise, at the end of a long cycling day.

And if there's one thing we're learning from being here, it's that the condition of the roads and buildings do nothing in reflecting peoples' attitude towards strangers. Moreover, their authentic hospitality and genuine support adds to the many reasons of why we tour cycle as a family; learning to appreciate the slow roads of Morocco. 
Off the beaten track.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/kiwi-traveller/76629889/exploring-the-beauty-of-morocco-by-bike
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Mercedes 240: Morocco’s Invincible Taxi Car (video on URL link)
Thursday 4 February 2016 - Youssef Igrouane Rabat

German automobile manufacturer Mercedes posted a video on YouTube in late January that tells the story of Mohamed El Bacha, a Moroccan taxi driver from Essaouira who drives a Mercedes Benz. In the video, El Bacha describes his epic journey as a Mercedes 240 taxi driver. “I bought this car in 1991, but it was in a really bad condition back then. It had been standing around for months. The previous owner had not really taken care of it. So I came and totally renewed the car, and since then I took care of it and will always love it. That’s the story,” El Bacha says.

In the three-minute video, El Bacha describes his abrupt career shift from pastry chef to taxi driver. He explains his love for his car that has never broke down.
“For the record: the car never broke down once, it’s been working flawlessly for 20 years now. These W 115 models just don’t stop all of a sudden. If there is a problem arising, you always get enough hints beforehand,” he says.

During a drive through Essaouira accompanied by jazz music, El Bacha asserts that regularly he has “about sixty, eighty, and sometimes hundred passengers a day.”

The video showcases the beauty of the Moroccan “Windy city,” including scenes of a picturesque sunset. The drive concludes when the confident El Bacha drives his car onto the beach of the homeland of Gnawa music, explaining why the Mercedes is the best car for the taxi business. El Bacha passionately reminisces about the role of the Mercedes 240 in Morocco, a car that has become an integral part of many Moroccans’ daily lives. “We just want Mercedes, it’s the only one that makes sense,” he says. “If there is a Mercedes, there is a taxi business.”
Edited by Kelsey Fish
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179005/mercedes-240-moroccos-invincible-taxi-car/
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Thousands Face Needless Suffering at End of Life Carry Out Policies Promising Pain Relief
(New York, February 4, 2016)

Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses in Morocco needlessly suffer from debilitating pain and other symptoms, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today to coincide with World Cancer Day.

The 77-page report, “Pain Tears Me Apart: Challenges and Progress in Ensuring the Right to Palliative Care in Morocco,” estimates that each year, more than 62,000 Moroccans need palliative care,  which focuses on improving the quality of life of people with life-limiting illnesses by treating pain and other symptoms. While  the Moroccan government has taken a number of important steps to improve end-of-life care, Human Rights Watch found only two public hospitals, in Casablanca and Rabat, have specific units that offer this essential health service, and only to cancer patients. Patients suffering severe pain outside of these cities must either undergo difficult travel to these centers or do without effective pain medicine.

Each year, more than 62,000 Moroccans need palliative care and needlessly suffer from debilitating pain and other symptoms. “There is an urgent need for the Moroccan government to expand palliative care services,” said Diederik Lohman, associate health director at Human Rights Watch. “Right now, thousands of people in Morocco with cancer and other serious health conditions are suffering needlessly from treatable symptoms.”

The report is the ninth in a series of Human Rights Watch studies of how countries are providing healthcare services for people with incurable illnesses. Other reports covered, Armenia, India, Kenya, Mexico, Senegal, and Ukraine, among others.

February 4, 2016 Report Challenges and Progress in Ensuring the Right to Palliative Care in Morocco
Download the full report

In Morocco, Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth interviews with 85 patients and healthcare workers in five regions of Morocco between September 2014 and January 2015, and carried out extensive analysis of Morocco’s laws, regulations and policies relevant to palliative care. 

Human Rights Watch found that the situation is particularly grim for the 40,000 Moroccans each year who need palliative care for illnesses other than cancer such as advanced heart, lung or renal disease. Morocco has no palliative care services at all for such patients.

There is an urgent need for the Moroccan government to expand palliative care services. Right now, thousands of people in Morocco with cancer and other serious health conditions are suffering needlessly from treatable symptoms. Diederik Lohman Associate Health Director, Health and Human Rights

As a result of the dearth of palliative care services, many patients face severe pain without appropriate treatment. Human Rights Watch   found that only about 1 in 50 doctors can prescribe morphine, the mainstay treatment for severe pain at the end of life, for ambulatory patients,   and estimates that four out of five people in Morocco who need it do not receive it. Home-based palliative care is non-existent outside Casablanca and Rabat.

“Because of the pain I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t talk to my friends,” said a 29-year-old man with a tumor in his leg and abdomen who did not have access to palliative care. “I wanted to crush my head against the wall.”

Human Rights Watch identified significant positive steps the Moroccan government has taken in recent years to develop palliative care services. In 2010 and 2012, it adopted national health policies with strong provisions on palliative care; in 2013 it removed a problematic restriction on morphine access from its drug law; and in 2015 Morocco became one of the first countries in the Middle East and North Africa to include a module on pain and palliative care in its undergraduate medial curriculum.

However, implementation has been slow. While the government simplified regulations for prescribing morphine in 2013, various legal and educational barriers impede its use. Palliative care units in Fez and Marrakesh, which the government had scheduled to open between 2011 and 2013 are not yet operating.  Few pharmacies or hospitals stock strong pain medications and few physicians prescribe them; and continuing medical education programs for current healthcare providers remain limited.

The World Health Organization considers palliative care an integral part of health care and recommends its integration into countries’ health systems.
Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, which Morocco ratified in 1979, says that governments have an obligation to ensure the availability of palliative care, access to essential palliative care medicines, including morphine, and adequate training of healthcare workers. Failure to do so may result in a violation of the right to health and in certain cases, could constitute a breach of the prohibition on cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

“Morocco has an opportunity to become a leader in palliative care in the Francophone African region,” said Dr. Mati Nejmi, a palliative care pioneer in the country.  “But it will need to significantly increase its efforts to ensure these services are available.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/04/morocco-thousands-face-needless-suffering-end-life
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North African drought threatens efforts to cut spending, boost growth
By Reuters , 4 February 2016 By Aziz El Yaakoubi RABAT, Feb 4 (Reuters)

Abnormally dry weather across North Africa is threatening to become another financial headache for Morocco and neighbouring Tunisia and Algeria, just as each seeks to spur more economic growth and cut public spending.

Rising food import costs would come at a delicate time, as Morocco faces protests over austerity measures, Tunisia struggles to ease an outburst of unrest over joblessness, and Algeria cuts spending after a collapse in oil prices.

Along with Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are among the world's biggest wheat importers, with import levels highly sensitive to the results of the local harvest.

"Drought has a huge impact across the region," Jon Marks, chairman of the consultancy Cross Border Information, said. "It weakens the trade balance and holds back efforts to overhaul the agriculture sector.""In Algeria and Tunisia, drought may slow the pace of planned subsidy cuts," he said. "Morocco, the region's big winner from the oil price slump, may channel some more resources into rural areas."

Morocco plans nearly $600 million of measures to support farming, including assistance for small farmers, feed subsidies, and around ($125.4 million) of insurance from the state-run Moroccan Agricultural Mutual Insurance (Mamda). It also plans to subsidise 800,000 tonnes of barley production and imports, by paying almost 1 dirham per kilogram of the crop.

With drought looming, the Moroccan cereal harvest is expected to fall sharply from an exceptional 2015 crop that hit a record 11 million tonnes.
"(The) rainfall deficit has reached around 61 percent until now. If the spring cultivation is also affected, this year's cereal harvest would reach hardly 2.5 millions tonnes," the head of Morocco's planning agency, Ahmed Lahlimi Alami, said.

The planning agency estimates that the drop in agricultural output will drag down gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 1.3 percent this year - against a government projection of 3 percent - from an estimated 4.4 percent in 2015. The agency, known by its French acronym HCP, says the drought would also increase government spending this year, raising doubts over plans to cut the budget deficit.

The government estimates that the budget deficit will fall to 3.5 percent of GDP this year from 4.3 percent in 2015. Agriculture accounts for more than 15 percent of the Moroccan economy.

LONGER IMPORT WINDOW
Experts and traders expect this year's Moroccan imports to remain under 3 million tonnes as last year's bumper harvest helps mitigate the impact of the drought. However, one Moroccan importer said the country would likely have to extend its import window, which is typically open from October to April.
The import window is closed to protect the local harvest, he said, but this year there may be nothing to protect. "We expect it to be expanded until the end of May," he said.

Importers expect shipments to rise next season, once last year's harvest has been worked through. They say the government should suspend custom duties on soft wheat to ensure adequate supplies to the market by the start of the next season.

Across the border in Algeria, officials played down the impact of any rain shortfall on their country's economy. "We cannot talk about drought right now," Agriculture Minister Sid Ahmedi Ferroukhi told reporters last week. "We had insufficient precipitation in November and December, but we got good volumes of rains and snows this month (January)."

Algeria's grain imports rose 11.2 percent to 13.67 million tonnes last year, despite efforts to curb purchases from abroad. Its foreign exchange reserves dropped by $6.33 billion to $152.7 billion in the third quarter as global crude oil prices plunged.

The government has said it plans to boost cereal output to 6.13 million tonnes this year from 3.77 million tonnes in 2015, through better-quality seeds, improved mechanisation and more incentives for farmers. It has also said it would raise total irrigated areas by two-thirds to 2 million hectares by 2019. The share of irrigation for cereals is expected to leap to 600,000 hectares from 60,000 hectares currently.

In Tunisia, El-Majid Ezzar, president of the Tunisian farmers organisation, said it was too soon to gauge the implications of the dry weather. "This will be a tough year, but we hope there will be enough rains in February and March to save the season," he said. Tunisia currently imports around 2.4 million tonnes of grains annually including 1.2 million tonnes of soft wheat, but experts and analysts expect trade deficits may widen because of heavier food imports.
Drought would also make it harder for governments to reform their subsidy systems, as requested by foreign lenders. ($1 = 9.9076 Moroccan dirham) (Additional reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Tarek Amara in Tunis; Editing by Jan Harvey)
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3431356/North-African-drought-threatens-efforts-cut-spending-boost-growth.html#ixzz404FSRrgO
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Morocco’s silent cultural revolution.
Mohamed Chtatou February 4, 2016

"While the political change is happening slowly, the cultural revolution is bulldozing its way ahead," Professor Mohamed Chtatou writes.

The digital revolution has brought to the Arab world the dream of democracy and personal freedom and is fundamentally changing the Arab mind, in spite of the strong tug of tradition and religion, which has always, in many ways, prevented progress towards societal change and cultural revival.
However, as this revolution is wrecking havoc in Arab societies, creating new realities and new narratives, many observers of this part of the world are duly asking the question: how will the Islamic religion react to this challenging situation? Adapt to it, or reject it?

THE SILENT REVOLUTION IN FULL SWING
The millennials are those children born at the turn of the millennium (a period of time extending from 1990 to 2005.) They came to life at the height of the digital revolution, spreading the ideals of globalization and freedom. The Internet is their arena for political activism and social interaction. Their ideals center round: democracy, freedom, respect for human rights, preservation of the environment, and the bashing of devious political and cultural practices and dogmatic religious beliefs.

In America, the millennials have recently stood by the Palestinians against Israeli onslaught on Gaza, a move which is unheard of in the annals of American politics. In the Arab World, the millennials successfully bashed dictatorships during the Arab Spring and are busy changing how politics is conducted. The millennials’ spring of democracy may be momentarily faltering, but it is not dying, it is just picking up steam for future rounds, more fruitful, hopefully.

In Morocco, the millennials are busy attacking the foundations of traditional culture and pushing further the frontiers of freedom. They all have new tools for expressing themselves openly: PCs, phablets, smartphones, and tablets. They can get Wi-Fi free connection in most cafés, restaurants, and public places, and even one city, El Jadida, is offering free internet services within the municipality limits (Anyway, most of the smartphones nowadays have 4G technology.)

The state media has always been in the service of the political and religious establishments, glorifying obsequiously the conservative and absolute monarchy and chanting the praise of a traditional and austere Islam that refuses to adapt to the realities of modern times. Sick of the fact that this media hardly ever treats subjects that are close to their hearts, the youth, representing almost 50% of the population in Morocco, created their own exclusive world on the Internet bashing the red lines of both politics and religion, forever.

This unprecedented silent revolution is taking place in Morocco and many Arab countries at the same time. It is true that the West and the rest of the world have been charmed by this unprecedented Arab awakening nicknamed « The Arab Spring », writing thousands of books and articles about it and making documentaries about its various manifestations, but nobody is paying any attention, whatsoever, to the quiet cultural revolution taking place behind the spotlight. The difference between the two phenomena being, that while the Arab Spring has been hijacked by the more absolutist Islamists pushing back societies to the Middle Ages, the cultural revolution is thriving just because nobody is paying much attention to it, at least for the time being.

MANIFESTATIONS OF MOROCCO'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION

The political arena
Monarchy: In the 2011 constitution, as in the previous ones, it is stated clearly that the person of the king is respected, i.e. above any form of criticism. As such all political parties from left or right adhere to this law, and instead criticize and vilify the government. On the Internet the youth argue that the monarch is going back on his indirect promise of incremental democracy and incremental devolution of power. But in spite of all this criticism, they still adhere to the monarchy as a symbol of arbitration and stability due to its historical and religious legitimacy, which has remained unscathed.

Political establishment: The youth criticize openly the self-perpetuating political parties, who never defend the interests of the electorate, but instead are subservient to the monarchy to further their interests by partaking unabashedly in the massive plunder of national wealth. So, for the youth, whether they are from the left or from the right, parties are all co-opted by the regime and indulge in corruption, nepotism, embezzlement, and abuse of power. Thus in this view, the political elite is patriarchal and tribal, in essence, though they preach modernity and democracy in their political discourse.

Political traditions: The youth openly reject the traditional form of the monarchy and government, known as Makhzen, which is obsolete in format, and archaic in essence. As such, they reject the bay3a, which is the traditional expression of allegiance that takes place on the second day of the Throne Day in July, whereby thousands of state employees and elites and local and national representatives, dressed in white djellabas (Moroccan traditional robes), bow to the king on his horse, an action which almost goes back 13 centuries, when the monarchy was first set up in Morocco. This act may be seen as a perpetuation of tradition but these traditions, in the eyes of the youth, also entrench the concept of subject, an individual who has only obligations, instead of that of citizen who has equally obligations and rights.

The youth are calling for a revamping of the monarchy, indeed the « Mouvement du 20 Février » that came in the heels of the Arab uprisings called for the establishment of constitutional monarchy instead of the present executive monarchy. They also see the bickering that is taking place between the king Mohammed VI and his cousin Moulay Hicham, nicknamed by the press « Red Prince » as a mere internal dispute.

Social arena 
Patriarchal and tribal obedience bashing: The Moroccan youth have always been silenced by the patriarchal and tribal concept of respect of seniority. In presence of the seniors, the youth are taught to keep silent and listen to the elders who have more experience. So, actually the youth never get a chance to express their opinions or become part of a political elite. Indeed, the whole political and social arena is off limits to them, while the elder dinosaurs dominate every walk of life to the extent that the political arena looks like it is a true Jurassic Park and that is, undoubtedly, one of the reasons of the advent of the Arab Spring. In the West, the youth are encouraged to form political elites, in Morocco and the Arab world, they are stifled and repressed and any rebellion on their part is considered as a rejection of tradition.

Female freedom: Since the adoption of a new family code in Morocco known as Moudawana on 2004, the Moroccan women are enjoying more freedom than in the past. Indeed, they can get married without the permission of a family guardian, refuse polygamy for their husbands, and enjoy a better deal in inheritance. This new family code has empowered the women and helped them break the chains of traditional slavery, in spite of the resistance of the Islamists by imposing Hijab and a certain dress code.

Religious arena
Sexual revolution: Men and women are joining forces to fight sexual religious taboos by openly dating with partners inside and outside the country, ending up either in marriage with non-Muslims or illicit haram relationships. Islamic religion allows men to marry non-Muslims freely but disallows females unless the would-be partner converts to Islam. Nowadays, women are not sticking to this religious constraint.

Sex workers: Many Moroccan women are exhibiting their naked bodies on the net to find work in the Gulf States as sex workers, something which has always been outlawed by religion. What is worse, many fathers and families are encouraging their female offspring to migrate to the Gulf countries to make money as prostitutes. In many ways this has become an accepted practice within the society. In addition hundreds of Gulf youth and adults come to Morocco for sexual tourism in cities as Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakesh, and Agadir.

Gay practice: Gay culture has existed in Morocco since the dawn of history and was always tolerated by society, as long as it is kept secret. However, thanks to the digital revolution, gays and lesbians are coming out of the closet to display openly their sexual identity, without fear of any retribution. Also, Tangier, Marrakesh, Essaouira, and Agadir have become gay nests alongside the traditional Tangier gay community which thrived thanks to foreigners, some of them very prominent on the public scene such as the late French writer Jean Genet and the late American writer Paul Bowles. Moroccan gays are not only coming out of the closet, but they are also writing about their sexual identity, such as Moroccan-French novelist Abdellah Taia, who published a book on his sexual orientation.

Public show of affection: In 2013 two youngsters from the conservative northern city of Nador, on leaving their school, kissed publicly and the video of their embrace was posted on YouTube. Their unusual act triggered various reactions nationwide: those who applauded the act and asked for the strengthening of personal freedom and those religiously-minded people who asked the State to punish the kids, who were, supposedly, under the subliminal influence of the western media.

In compliance with its conservative nature, the state arrested the couple, but this triggered a worldwide campaign for their release and couples of youngsters organized a kiss-in in front of the parliament in Rabat in defiance of religious conservatism. Under the pressure of the global public, the government released the kids and dropped charges.

The Amazigh support Israel not Palestine: Since the revival of the Amazigh nationalism in North Africa, the Amazigh militants in Morocco have been denouncing the official line on Islam and calling for the rewriting of history by stating clearly that the Arabs in the 7th century conquered North Africa by the sword and not by the act of peaceful conversion of the population to Islam known as foutouhat.

They reject Islamic presence in the area as the worst form of colonialism ever experienced by the Amazigh people of this region. In their resistance to the Arab obliterating culture, they called for making Tamazight an official language, which was achieved in the constitution of 2011. However, their most abrasive move is to call for friendship with Israel by setting up Israeli-Amazigh associations, arguing that there are many Jewish Amazigh people, who have made a notable contribution to the culture and that Israel like the Amazigh are victims of pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism. Besides, films were made about the painful departure of the Jewish Amazigh to Israel such as Kamal Hachkar’s film « Tinghir-Jerusalem: les échos du Mellah ». For many Moroccan Arab nationalists, these Amazigh people are traitors of Morocco and Islam and should be arrested and put in jail.

CONCLUSION
Many people are arguing, quite strongly, that the Arab Spring is gone to the dogs, and it might seem so, but the truth of the matter is that it is not. It is just picking up steam, redefining the route and straightening up priorities to resume progression, stronger than ever. The big change will happen in the Arab World, come what may, maybe not all at once, as many people would want, but in an incremental fashion because Arab minds are all framed in a traditional way and all constrained by religious dogmatism and determinism.

But, while the political change is happening slowly, the cultural revolution is bulldozing its way ahead, with much determination, and Moroccan millennials, in particular, and Arab millennials, in general, are busting taboos with much strength, be they cultural or religious, and thus creating a new reality on the ground. They want to create a future of their liking, responding to their real needs and not to the expectations of a religion or a culture imposed on them. Actually, all they are doing is exercising their right to choose and decide for themselves.

Note: A previous version of this article erroneously mentioned « Mouvement du 20 Novembre », which has now been updated to « Mouvement du 20 Février ».
http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/culture/moroccos-silent-cultural-revolution_38562
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Undergrad studies Arabic in Morocco on Boren Scholarship
Posted by Contributing Writer × 02/09/2016

This story is part of an occasional series that looks to highlight the benefits students derive from studying abroad and internships. FIU students are encouraged to seek out these opportunities by working with FIU’s Study Abroad Office and Career Services as well as professors and mentors. International Relations major Dayra Carvajal is currently on a prestigious, $20,000 Boren scholarship in Morocco studying Arabic for a year. Below she reflects on her experience studying abroad. Read more internship profiles here.
By  Dayra Carvajal

One year and one month have passed since I made the decision to study abroad in Morocco. Today, I can confidently say it was the best decision I have ever made.

Global understanding and international affairs have interested me for as long as I can remember. My passion and deep interest for diverse cultures and traditions tremendously inspired me to look for opportunities to further explore other countries and regions, not only in theory – with the knowledge acquired through a major in international relations – but in actual practice. I was happily surprised by the countless opportunities to live and study abroad available to students from all fields and backgrounds, which are frequently created and promoted by various schools and departments at FIU, such as the Study Abroad Office.

It was precisely through one of the information sessions hosted by the Study Abroad Office that I learned about the David L. Boren Scholarship, an initiative of the National Security Education Program that provides funding opportunities for undergraduate students to study less commonly taught languages in world regions critical to U.S. interests. It was then that I realized that my college years and my professional path would not be complete without an experience overseas, and in line with my desire to serve my country in the future, and to promote cultural understanding between the United States and North Africa, my area of study, I made the decision to apply for their Arabic language program in Morocco.

Five months, five countries, four host families, countless couscous (traditional Moroccan dish), numerous train, ferry, airplane, horse and camel rides later, I’ve learned beyond my expectations about the history, traditions, language and local customs of a uniquely diverse country. Furthermore, I  have found fascination in the Maghreb region, particularly in the connection between the Mediterranean coast, the Spanish-Andalusian traditions, the Arab World, and the African ancestry that coincide altogether in Morocco.

Throughout this journey, I’ve experienced the strength and potential of the Worlds Ahead education I have received at FIU. In Morocco, I have had the opportunity to practice my Classical and Moroccan Arabic skills with shopkeepers, taxi drivers, my host family and local students on a daily basis, and during this short time span I have been able to go from a simple -“As-salamu Alaykum”- to holding small conversations about the sociopolitical context of the country (often times using a mix of Arabic, French, English and hand gestures at once). The ability to interact with locals in an open and respectful manner reminds me of my daily life at FIU, where we have the possibility to communicate with a community receptive to multicultural understanding – a unique opportunity that prepared me for my time abroad.

Moreover, I have experienced firsthand the hospitality of Moroccans, who have shown me that study abroad is a once in a lifetime opportunity, where I have been part of a family and a society with origins and traditions different to my own, and yet have embraced and welcomed me in the celebration of religious holidays such as “Eid Al Ftr”(celebrating the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting), family traditions like weddings, and the accustomed daily tea time.

This cultural immersion paired with an in-depth education on the religious, political, economic and social aspects related to the country and the region has also allowed me to volunteer and teach English to children and young adults, conduct a research project assessing the current state of sub-Saharan migration and refugee population in Morocco, and spend my free time learning Moroccan sewing techniques from a local tailor shop.

Beyond providing me with the language, academic and professional experiences I was looking for in a study abroad program, my time in Morocco has taught me how to leave my comfort zone and assess challenges imposed by an unfamiliar context, language and society in a tolerant manner, and has instilled in me a sense of greater appreciation and understanding for the different array of values and worldviews found abroad.

When I first transferred to FIU from Colombia, I would’ve never imagined that 2 years after I would find myself writing these lines from Morocco. However, with the support, guidance and encouragement of directives, professors, advisers, classmates, friends and countless people within our FIU family, I was able to, against all odds, embark on a journey that has made me realize what the true meaning is of being an international citizen. This is my invitation and words of encouragement for those of you who desire to explore other cultures and traditions to not be afraid and take the next step to be Worlds Ahead.
http://news.fiu.edu/2016/02/boren-scholar-studies-arabic-in-morocco/97161
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Nomadic Filmland Academy Offers Youth Opportunity to Be Filmmaking Production Assistants
Friday 12 February 2016 - Youssef Igrouane Rabat

The 1001 Nights Filmmaking Program, a unique opportunity for youth to be filmmaking production assistants, is scheduled to take place from May 18th through the 27th in Marrakech and Ouarzazate. The event will be staged by Nomadic Filmland Academy, a new filmmaking program created by the young, colorful Moroccan Chaymaa Rhou last year. It seeks to supply opportunities to promising production assistants, support their passion, and further upgrade their artistic credentials. The nine-day program also offers them the opportunity to network with professional, international mentors.

“The aim is to enhance the skills of participants in filmmaking and offer them the access to our film network and media partners during the program. We also hope to prepare them to build a name in the industry,” Chaymaa Rhou told MWN.

The program will include practical activities and workshops in English. They will be conducted by two international experts, Marco Zaccaria and Robera Chimera.
The two experts will guide the participants in embarking on their brilliant careers by instructing them in the skills to tell stories visually, creating visual experiences through images and sounds, and publishing visual content through the web. They will also share their professional experiences in directing, production, scriptwriting, editing, filming, and storytelling. At the end of workshops, the coaches will assist the participants in producing a short collaborative film together.

Additionally, the participants will benefit from the usage of professional, advanced materials for filming and editing during the course of the program.
They will also profit from the access to Moroccan Hollywood Ouarzazate Studios, Nomadic Filmland Academy’s media partners and film experts.
Nomadic Filmland Academy’s mission is to be a bridge that enables promising filming artists to overcome obstacles and excel in the visual arts field in Morocco.
To apply for 1001 Nights Filmmaking Program, visit www.nomadicfilmacademy.com
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179636/nomadic-filmland-academy-offers-youth-opportunity-to-be-filmmaking-production-assistants/
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Morocco Has Third Largest Prison Population in the Arab World
Thursday 11 February 2016 - morocco world news By Zainab Calcuttawala, Rabat

Morocco has the third highest prison population rate in the Arab world, according to data published in The World Prison Brief by the London-based Institute for Criminal Policy Research last week. With 222 out of every 100,000 inhabitants in prison, the size of the Moroccan prison population is third only to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, both Gulf countries that incarcerate at a rate of 301 and 229 inhabitants per 100,000, respectively.

The report stated that the world prison population rate puts 144 out of every 100,000 people in prison, with Seychelles and the United States topping the international list with 799 and 698 people per 100,000 locked up in the two countries. The Central African Republic and Liechtenstein had the lowest rates, with 16 and 21 out of every 100,000 in prison in the countries.

The new data, collected in October 2015, comes at the heels of reports that prisons in Morocco are becoming increasingly crowded and violent.
Last November, Delegate General of the Prison Service and Reinsertion, Mohamed Saleh Tamek stood before the Legalization and Justice Committee of the House of Representatives in Rabat to underscore increases in prison violence during 2015.

According to the numbers he presented, assaults amongst prisoners and against prison staff doubled between 2014 and 2015. Populations in certain regional prisons have also risen as much as 300 percent.
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/02/179573/179573/
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