The initiative is designed to promote access to justice for women in Morocco. Through this national on-line database of domestic court decisions related to women’s rights, we are:

  • Collecting and publishing diverse court decisions from jurisdictions across the country;
  • Monitoring and documenting how the justice system treats women’s rights issues;
  • Analyzing court decisions from a human rights perspective, looking at their application of national legislation, and their conformity with Morocco’s international human rights obligations;
  • Providing a framework for systematic observation of how the laws are applied according to different criteria and variables.

By publically sharing court decisions and model pleadings, we strive to encourage best practices of human-rights based interpretations and applications of the law in women’s rights cases. We hope that information on strategies used by legal practitioners across the country and the legal reasoning used by different courts will be a useful tool for lawyers and judges as they litigate and rule on such cases. Such information sharing should encourage creative litigation by lawyers in their case strategies and legal arguments, and innovative interpretation and application of laws by courts.

Researchers, advocacy NGOs and policymakers should also find the site a useful tool for identifying areas for law reform where legislation is ineffective, not responsive to social realities, or not in conformity with women’s rights principles. It can also help identify needs for structural reform to the judicial system. Publishing harmful court decisions can also serve to identify and denounce current practices that violate women’s rights.

Our website ultimately seeks to promote access to justice for women through:

  • Fact-based assessments of the treatment of women by the justice system;
  • Rights-based pleadings, legal reasoning, and analyses of court decisions on women’s rights;
  • Transparency of and public accessibility to court decisions;
  • Accountability of the justice system for its handling of women’s rights cases;
  • Equality and non-discrimination in the application of laws by courts across the country in cases involving women’s rights.