Committee on the Elimination of the Discrimination against Women: 20 June 2022

“Thank you honorable chair,
I am delivering this statement on behalf of Kasbah Tal’fin and ILGA world. My name is Mariyem Gamar, I am a young leader for freedom and equality, who happens to be a woman and a lesbian and a Moroccan. Our shadow report addressed issues of discrimination, criminalization, violence, and exclusion of LBT women in Morocco.
In Morocco, Lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women live between the crushing weight of two oppressions: the legal criminalization of our existence and lack of protection from social stigma.
At the age of 16, I remember walking on an afternoon in my village, a group of boys threw a big rock on my back because they knew I am a lesbian. I remember walking regardless of the pain in my back and the rocks kept coming. I felt fear and since then, I wanted peace. I chose to be out and visible as an equal individual of society, but that came with social stigma and violence. Eight years later, there are still no clear laws that protect women from violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation. In fact, these laws actively prosecute us, regardless of age.
Your family can still force you to marry, you landlord could refuse your housing, your casual stranger in the street could beat or rape you, and your employer could fire you reject you. Not only does the current penal code doesn’t protect us; it also gives power to other members of society to have power over us. These are scars we carry. We are left behind.
We believe Moroccan women deserve to live freely and equally and in their homeland. Therefore, we demand urgent legal reforms to protect women on the basis of our sexual orientations and gender identity and remove article 489. ”

Delivered by Mariyem Gamar