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Association el Amane pour le Développement de la Femme (EL AMANE) in Morocco organized 161 consultative meetings in 35 cities and villages that engaged over 1800 women in order to collect the recommendations that were included in a draft law to prevent domestic violence. Based on the statistics of civil society organizations working in support centers for women, nine out of ten women are subject to violence perpetrated by their husband. This incredible level of abuse experienced by women resulted in EL AMANE’s decision to lobby law makers to institute a law criminalizing domestic violence.

In undertaking this effort, EL AMANE established contacts with nine (9) non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the national level, with whom they trained 94 facilitators from 39 grass root NGOs on conducting focus groups with women coming from different socio-economic backgrounds. These trained facilitators then organized 161 consultative meetings in 35 cities and villages which engaged 1,836 women. The results of this process were collected in recommendations that were included in a draft law. These recommendations were summarized in a document that included drawings prepared by the participants in the consultative meetings and assisted by professional painters, illustrating the kinds of domestic violence abuses suffered by women.

With the draft law in hand, El AMANE and the partner NGOs conducted meetings with decision makers which were accompanied by a media campaign and town hall meetings aimed at informing the general public about the lobbying process and the importance to have a law preventing domestic violence.

The awareness raising process of a large number of local communities on the subject and the lobbying process was able to catch the attention of the media which covered most of the events of the process.

The main obstacle encountered was the ability to meet with the governmental and parliamentarian stakeholders. However, with the continuous collective advocacy effort, it was possible to overcome this barrier. Although the law has not been passed, a promise to support the draft law on the prevention of domestic violence was made on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. Advocacy efforts are still ongoing in order to get the bill voted and implemented. In spite of the lack of passage of the bill, modest improvements have been witnessed on the field level. For instance, public safe houses that host women victims of violence have been created. However, a continuing challenge remains that those safe houses are located in big cities and remain limited.

El Amane was founded in 2002 by a group of young women in Sidi Youssef Ben Ali, a disenfranchised neighborhood in Marrakech. El Amane provides rights education and operates support centers to serve Morocco’s most vulnerable populations: poor women, single mothers, sex workers and child servants.  El Amane educates women about their rights and how to defend them, facilitates direct access to the legal system, and works with other human rights organizations to inform policymakers about continuing violations of women’s rights.