[ Human Trafficking, Country-by-Country ]

MOROCCO (Tier 2) – Extracted in part from the U.S. State Dept 2023 TIP Report

The Government of Morocco does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.  The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Morocco remained on Tier 2.  These efforts included improving law enforcement data collection efforts and disaggregating trafficking from smuggling cases in the data.  The government reported achieving the most trafficking convictions since 2001 and increased investigations and prosecutions.  The government also initiated prosecutions of government officials for alleged complicity in child forced labor and trafficking-related crimes.  In addition, the government fully approved a comprehensive victim identification guide, an NRM, and a 2023-2030 anti-trafficking strategy in March 2023.  However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas.  Specialized shelter and services for trafficking victims remained insufficient, and the government did not report providing financial or in-kind support to civil society organizations providing victim services.  Despite progress on a victim identification guide and the NRM, the government remained without comprehensive victim identification and referral procedures for most of the reporting period.  Lack of proactive screening and identification measures continued to leave certain populations, such as undocumented migrants, vulnerable to penalization solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked, including immigration violations.

Prioritized Recommendations

Systematically implement procedures to proactively identify trafficking victims, especially among vulnerable populations such as undocumented migrants.

Fully implement a national victim referral mechanism and train judicial, law enforcement authorities, civil society, and other victim protection actors on its application.

Provide adequate protection services for victims of all forms of trafficking, including but not limited to shelter, psycho-social services, legal aid, and repatriation assistance.

Increase provision of specialized services for populations vulnerable to trafficking and increase financial or in-kind support to NGOs that provide these services.

Investigate, prosecute, and convict traffickers using the anti-trafficking law, including forced labor cases.

Train law enforcement and judicial officials, child labor inspectors, and healthcare personnel on awareness of the anti-trafficking law, victim identification, non-penalization of victims, and referral best practices using current mechanisms with the NGO community to increase officials’ ability to identify internal trafficking cases, as well as cross-border trafficking cases, as distinct from migrant smuggling crimes.

Ensure that victims are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked, such as “prostitution” or immigration violations.

Implement nationwide anti-trafficking awareness campaigns.

Continue improving law enforcement data collection and disaggregating trafficking data from migrant smuggling data.