The Chairperson of the National Human Rights Council (CNDH), Mrs. Amina Bouayach, underlined that several tangible transformations related to the issue of disability were implemented in Morocco in the first decade of this century. They paved the way for recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities and their enshrining at the legislative and institutional levels in the second decade of this phase.She also noted that the situation of persons with disabilities still indicates a widening gap between the recognition of their rights and their effectiveness.

These declarations were part of the CNDH Chairperson participation in the opening lesson on “the rights of persons with disability between recognition and effectiveness,” held on Tuesday 1 November 2022, at the Faculty of Education Sciences in Rabat, Morocco.

Within this context, she stressed that strengthening legislative and institutional mechanisms is a fundamental and indispensable stage in the process of recognizing rights. However, it does not result in effective access to those rights spontaneously.

She also noted that the full and effective enjoyment of rights remains dependent on the extent to which States apply the three dimensions of the well-known principles in the field of human rights promotion: respect, protection, and fulfillment.

Mrs. Bouayach addressed the situation of the rights of persons with disabilities and the extent to which they effectively access the right to education, employment, health and political participation... She concluded that what has been achieved on the ground is the recognition of their rights while ensuring the effectiveness of these rights still requires efforts.

She said that this situation might be caused by several reasons, mainly:

- Stereotypes and negative representations towards persons with disabilities in society,
- Weakness or absence of convergence between policies and coordination among all stakeholders working in the field of disability,
- Lack of comprehensiveness of access to rights and the enjoyment of services,
- Disparity in the health coverage in several regions and its repercussions on the health of persons with disabilities,
- Difficulty of universal access to justice and absence of accommodations at the litigation stages, including sign language interpretation, which affects the fulfillment of fair trial conditions in accordance with Article 13 of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Mrs. Bouayach emphasized that two-thirds of persons with disabilities do not benefit from any social security system due to the scarcity of data related to the social situation of persons with disabilities in Morocco and the difficulty to translate legal texts into reality to ensure their social protection.

At the end of her lesson, the CNDH Chairperson called for setting measures to raise awareness to confront mistaken ideas /attitudes and limit behaviors harming the rights of persons with disabilities.

She also recommends updating the general population and housing census data by adopting complementary questions that enable checking the initial declarations and increasing the accuracy of the obtained data.

Download the opening lesson of Mrs. Amina Bouayach (Available in Arabic)