STATEMENT
41th UPR Session of the Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in Morocco, as delivered by Ambassador Tine Mørch Smith,Permanent Representative of Norway in Geneva.
Check against delivery
8 November 2022
President,
Norway welcomes Morocco as a member of the Human Rights Council for the period 2023-2025. Norway commends Morocco for initiating steps to reform the family code, and for the de facto moratorium on the death penalty since 1993.
Norway recommends that Morocco
1) implements legislation that unequivocally prohibits child marriages and guarantees equality between men and women;
2) fully safeguards the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including for human rights defenders, journalists and media workers;
3) reforms the Penal Code to decriminalise all consensual sexual relations outside marriage, explicitly criminalise rape and guarantee women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights;
4) ensures full access for the OHCHR in Western Sahara;
5) ratifies the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR on the abolition of the death penalty.
Thank you.