The government increased overall anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts. Law 27.14 criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking and prescribed penalties of five to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine between 10,000 and 500,000 dirhams (DH) ($1,010 and $50,740) for offenses involving adult victims, and 20 to 30 years’ imprisonment and a fine between 100,000 and one million DH ($10,150 and $101,470) for those involving child victims. These penalties were sufficiently stringent, and regarding sex trafficking, commensurate with penalties for other grave crimes, such as rape.
In 2023, the government investigated 79 new trafficking cases leading to the arrest of 119 suspects. This was similar to the 120 trafficking new cases investigated in 2022. The government initiated the prosecution of 171 alleged traffickers, an increase compared with the prosecution of 149 alleged traffickers in 2022 and the highest reported number of trafficking prosecutions since at least 2011. Of the 171 prosecutions in 2023, 150 were for alleged sex trafficking and 32 for forced labor (including one for forced begging, 12 for “practices similar to slavery,” and six for forced criminality); some cases involved multiple forms of trafficking. The government convicted 82 traffickers in 2023, a slight decrease from the conviction of 101 traffickers in 2022. The 82 convictions included 62 sex trafficking convictions and 20 forced labor convictions (including three forced begging convictions and four convictions for “practices similar to slavery”). Courts sentenced all convicted traffickers to at least one year in prison; sentences ranged from one year in prison to 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment.
In March 2023, the Department of State suspended for one year the A-3 and G-5 visa sponsorship privileges afforded to Morocco mission members because the government declined to waive diplomatic immunity for U.S. criminal proceedings related to human trafficking and serious mistreatment of domestic workers and has not initiated its own prosecution.In December 2019, a diplomat posted to the Moroccan Mission to the United Nations in New York, his ex-wife, and her brother were indicted for, among other crimes, conspiring to commit visa fraud from 2006 to 2016 to exploit foreign domestic workers from the Philippines, Morocco, and other countries. U.S. authorities arrested the former diplomat’s ex-wife in March 2019; she died in 2021 prior to trial. The other two defendants remain at large. The government reported an ongoing judicial investigation into the former diplomat; however, for the sixth consecutive year, it did not report completing a prosecution or other administrative action to hold the former diplomat accountable. Aside from this judicial investigation, the government did not report any new investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in human trafficking crimes and did not report updates on past prosecutions initiated. The General Prosecutor continued to ensure there were two prosecutors specialized in handling trafficking cases in every court of appeal across the country, resulting in 44 trafficking-specialized prosecutors across Morocco. The government coordinated trainings, at times in cooperation with international organizations, for prosecutors, border officials, law enforcement, labor inspectors, and other officials on trafficking indicators, investigations, and related topics.
from 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report – U.S. Department of State
2024 Trafficking in Persons Report – United States Department of State
