This historic decision comes at a time when further progress has been slow to materialise after thirty years of an informal moratorium, and despite an increasing number of institutional and legislative signals in favour of progress towards the abolition of capital punishment since the 2000s.
The vote of the Resolution for a universal moratorium at the United Nations is an indicator of the evolution of the political will of States on the issue of the application of capital punishment. This unprecedented support could mark a decisive new stage in the Moroccan authorities’ progress towards justice without the death penalty, making the prospect of abolition in Morocco more tangible and closer than ever.
An open public debate, driven by years of mobilisation by abolitionist civil society
In Morocco, all actors with a role to play in abolishing the death penalty can get involved and debate freely. ECPM has actively supported the commitment of Moroccan civil society to making abolition a reality, through considerable advocacy, capacity-building and awareness-raising efforts. For more than a decade, Moroccan civil society has organised itself around the abolitionist cause by creating a number of networks at national and regional level, and by joining the global abolitionist network, which has enabled it to regularly place the fight against the death penalty at the heart of the national public debate. Its relentless mobilisation, through years of advocacy and awareness-raising action, undeniably contributed to this turning point in the Moroccan vote, in favour of the United Nations Resolution for a moratorium.
To date, the Moroccan Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CMCPM) is one of the most active national abolitionist coalitions in the world. Founded in 2003 on the sidelines of an international seminar on the death penalty organised by the Moroccan Prison Observatory, the CMCPM quickly became a key player in the fight against the death penalty. It contributed to the creation of numerous Moroccan abolitionist networks: the Network of Parliamentarians Against the Death Penalty in Morocco (2013), which originally comprised more than 250 parliamentarians of all political persuasions, apart from the Justice and Development Party; the Network of Lawyers Against the Death Penalty in Morocco (2013), which notably organises a pleading competition; the Network of Journalists Against the Death Penalty (2019); the Network of Teachers Against the Death Penalty (2020); and the Network of Entrepreneurs Against the Death Penalty (2022), the first network of its kind in the world.
This decision would never have seen the light of day had it not been for years of advocacy and work by women and men and abolitionist NGOs. Abolitionists in Morocco, through their determination, were able to destroy the silence, fear and resistance of conservatives and politicians who lacked the courage and vision for a death penalty-free Morocco.
Abderrahim Jamai, coordinator of the Moroccan Coalition Against the Death Penalty, on Morocco’s vote in favour of the UN resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, on 17 December 2024
Signs of openness among Moroccan political decision-makers since 2000
This political decision follows a number of advances in the Kingdom over the last twenty years, including the adoption of several legislative reforms. One of the most significant milestones in 2011 was the inclusion of the right to life in the Constitution, which is now guaranteed in Article 20: ‘The right to life is the primary right of every human being. The law protects this right’. In 2014, reform of the Code of Military Justice resulted in the removal of around ten provisions relating to capital punishment, limiting its scope.
Positions in favour of opening up dialogue on abolition are also affirmed at the highest level of the State: in 2014, the King welcomed the efforts made by abolitionist associations, in an unprecedented public communication legitimising the holding of an open dialogue and the actions of civil society.
We welcome the debate on the death penalty, initiated by civil society and numerous parliamentarians and legal experts. It will enable this issue to mature and be explored in greater depth.
His Majesty Mohammed VI, Second National Human Rights Forum in Marrakech, 2014
In 2004, the King established the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER), whose final report in 2006 made a number of recommendations on the death penalty, calling in particular for a reduction in the scope of the death penalty and ratification of OP2 – the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.
Several justice ministers have spoken out publicly in favour of progress towards abolition. In 2019, for the first time, the then Moroccan Minister of Justice gave a speech at the opening of the 7th World Congress against the Death Penalty organised by ECPM at the European Parliament. In 2020, the same Minister of Justice invited a parliamentary seminar on the death penalty, organised by the CNDH, the Moroccan Coalition and ECPM, to be held at the Ministry itself. In 2022, the current Minister of Justice took part in the National and Maghreb Conference on the Death Penalty organised in Rabat by the Moroccan Coalition, the Moroccan Prison Observatory and ECPM, where he stated that the death penalty was considered to be one of the key points of the criminal justice reform under discussion in Morocco.
Morocco’s National Council for Human Rights is also a leader in the fight against the death penalty, and has repeatedly spoken out in favour of its abolition in various national, regional and international fora, regularly collaborating on initiatives led by civil society, in particular the Moroccan Coalition, the various networks and the ECPM. For the President of the CNDH, in office since 2018, ‘the abolition of the death penalty is an institutional position that has been affirmed and confirmed‘.
The persistent use of the death penalty by the courts
While the abolition of the death penalty is being debated more than ever, death sentences continue to be handed down by the courts. Between 2010 and 2021, nearly ten people were sentenced to death each year, for acts of terrorism or for ordinary offences that attracted considerable media attention. However, the number of death sentences handed down dropped to 3 in 2022 and 2 in 2023. There are currently 88 people on death row in Moroccan prisons, including one woman.
The number of people sentenced to death incarcerated in Moroccan prisons has fallen considerably over the last thirty years, mainly due to the exercise of the right to a royal pardon. For Moroccan authorities, ‘royal pardons contribute greatly to rebalancing the punitive policy’. King Mohammed VI has exercised his right to pardon on several occasions to commute death sentences to life imprisonment, collectively or individually, on the occasion of national holidays such as the Feast of the Throne or Eid el-Adha: an estimated 156 people sentenced to death benefited from pardons between 2000 and 2023.
These initiatives are obviously welcomed by Moroccan civil society actors, but they are nonetheless concerned to see the number of people under sentence of death rising steadily again over the last three years.
Morocco’s next challenges and expected commitments on the death penalty
For the past ten years, the Moroccan authorities have been engaged in a process aimed at reforming the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. The draft submitted by the former Minister of Justice included a major reduction in the number of offences punishable by death, from thirty-six to eleven. Following the appointment of a new government in October 2021, the draft of the new Penal Code was reworked. To date, the draft revised Penal Code has not yet been presented to Parliament.
On 10 December 2024, the Minister of Justice stated that the bill would be submitted before the end of the current legislature and that the new text aimed to provide Morocco with a modern legal framework ‘in line with the best international human rights standards’.
In February 2025, a representative of the Moroccan Ministry of Justice took part in the high-level panel on the question of the death penalty at the Human Rights Council, to highlight Morocco’s vote in favour of the Resolution as well as to present the Kingdom’s current practices and its interactions with international mechanisms and conventions on capital punishment. On this occasion, Morocco indicated that the draft reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure would introduce a mechanism to limit the imposition of the death penalty by requiring the unanimous decision of judges, as well as the submission of automatic requests for pardon by the sentence enforcement judge for persons sentenced to death.
Annual gathering of members of the Moroccan Coalition against the Death Penalty (CMCPM) in front of Parliament in Rabat, to mark the World Day against the Death Penalty (here on 10 October 2023)
Post by the Ministry of Justice following a meeting between (from left to right) Abderrahim Jamai (CMCPM), Nouzha Skalli (Network of Moroccan Parliamentarians against the Death Penalty), Mr Abdellatif Ouahbi, Minister of Justice, and Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan (ECPM), Rabat, October 2021
Nouzha Skalli, former minister, former MP, co-founder and coordinator of the Network of Moroccan Parliamentarians Against the Death Penalty, during her participation in the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty organised by ECPM, Brussels, 2019
Amina Bouayach, President of the Moroccan National Council for Human Rights, at a side-event organised by ECPM ahead of the vote in the 3rd Committee of the United Nations Resolution for a moratorium, UNGA, New York, October 2022
To learn more
