Rendered by the Council of State in The Hague, on May 20, 2025 and published on the 26th current, a judgment made case law by allowing Moroccan single mothers to submit a request for asylum in the Netherlands, if their request establishes the real risk of criminal proceedings. The decision was rendered in favor of a national, who appealed after an expulsion measure targeting her with her three children, as well as an administrative refusal in 2023.
In time, this first verdict agreed with the ministry of asylum and migration, on the grounds that Morocco is designated as a country of safe origin. However, this provision does not apply to persons referred to in legal actions, which may “demonstrate concretely that the existing legal guarantees in Morocco against violations of rights and freedoms are not ensured in the individual case”.
For its part, the ministry has argued on appeal that “this means that there must be concrete and individual indications that criminal prosecution will actually be committed”. In The expectations of the judgmentthe Council of State recognizes the admissibility of the applicant’s grievance, since it “has shown that it would be exposed to criminal proceedings if it returned to Morocco and that legal guarantees against violations of rights and freedoms are not assured in its individual case”.
A risk of prosecution and multiple consequences
The applicant’s appeal is based on articles 490 and 491 of Criminal code relating to relationships outside-mariage and adultery, as well as the provisions of Family code on the cancellation of legal supervision and child care. The request also quotes the 2022 report of the MRA/Mobilizing for Rights association, “protection, not prison: how the criminalization of out -of -marriage sex promotes violence”. According to this document, the annual number of proceedings in these similar cases over the period studied exceeded 10,000 in Morocco.
In this report, the association proposed comparison encrypted, to call to mobilize the efforts of the prosecution in order to better protect women victims of violence to give primacy to the prevention principle, rather than imprisoning others for consenting outside-mariage. She stressed that in 2020, 46 people were continued for murder with premeditation on women (female). 756 were for rape, 2,034 for violence against women resulting from an inability greater than 20 days and 505 for sexual harassment in public spaces.
In addition, 20 were started for sexual harassment at work and only 2 for non-compliance with the prohibition measure to get in touch with the victim. Of a total of 3,363 overall, this reduced number contrasts with that of prosecution for sex outside-mariage, which reached 13,018 the same year.
In addition to these documents, the concerned referred to the article of the “response to Morocco: convictions for extramarital sexual relations”, of the Austrian Center for Research and Documentation on countries of origin and asylum, as well as the “in short official thematic report on the principle of bis in idem, foreign criminal convictions and private life legislation” of 2023.
A debate on legislative reforms and the principle of protection
Dated December 14, 2023, a MRA letter was attached to the file. In her request, the mother explains in particular “having to address the Moroccan authorities to obtain official identity documents for her youngest child”. “To this end, it will have to present the Dutch birth certificate on which no father is mentioned. From this, the Moroccan authorities can deduce that his youngest child was born from an extramarital relationship, “retains from the Council of State in his judgment.
As for the email of MRA/Mobilizing for Rights, he confirms that “when requesting official identity documents for a child born outside-mariage, the authorities will be informed of a criminal violation of extramarital sex and will proceed to prosecution”. In some cities in Morocco, single mothers can give their child their mattreamy, or a chosen name from an exhaustive list. But these practices are mainly of personal effort within the administrations concerned and that of NGOs, due to the lack of legal provisions in this area.
This registration does not allow a paternal filiation, thus relegating children born out of mariage to the rank of second-class citizens. In the event of legal action against them, mothers are exposed not only to a tutorship forfeiture, but also to socio-economic constraints, in terms of reintegration of the job market after a prison sentence. Suffice to say that the sum of precariousness accents the uncertainties on the quality of life of minor children.
Contacted this Wednesday by Yabiladi this Wednesday, the MRA association welcomed that the decision comes from a Supreme Court, giving primacy to the best interests of the child. “Because of the risks of criminal proceedings and the status of children born out of mariage, the latter may not have been able to have regular education like all the others, in the event of return to Morocco,” explains the NGO.
“The children would also have lived from their mother, if a conviction fell. The imperative was mainly that the little ones remain with their mother and that their rights be guaranteed, in view of the obligation of international protection by the member states of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CIDE). ”
MRA association
Beyond the individual case, MRA informs Yabiladi to “the hope that this jurisprudence above all will make it possible to make things happen and to have a contribution in the debate on the situation of children born out of marine in Morocco, in the context of the reform of the family code, as well as that of single mothers, also with regard to the provisions of the penal code”.
