The New York Times covers Morocco's single mothers

This morning, I woke up to an interesting New York Times article: 5 years later, Morocco is still adjusting to a Family Reform Law.

It sometimes seems like every article written about Morocco these days addresses the Moudawana (the reformed Family Law), but I was heartened to see this article focus upon single mothers, an often-ignored group of Moroccan women (and the focus of my Fulbright research):

"Latifa al-Amrani, 21, from Salé, near Rabat, [...] is about to become a single mother. She met a man, Ali, 24, who claimed he was a plainclothes policeman, and one day he took her supposedly to meet his aunt. It was an empty apartment, and they made love.

“He told me he wanted to marry me,” Ms. Amrani said. “But then he changed his phone and I couldn’t reach him anymore.” She filed a complaint with the police but has heard nothing from them. Her parents beat her, she said, so she ran away.

She [...] says she intends to keep her baby."

In general, the article provides a concise overview of the challenges of implementing the new law. However, I was disappointed that the author choose to highlight a foreign organization instead of a Moroccan one. I have no doubt that the Spanish group 100% Mamans is a worthwhile organization, but I would have liked the author to focus on one of the many Moroccan-run groups that makes headway on this issue. In the past 6 months, I've visited several, and I begin an intensive internship at one today.

Oum El Banine, my organization, was the first Moroccan organization to address the situation of single mothers, and was similar originally to the profiled 100% Mamans in that it's funding and leadership were based largely in Europe. Hands changed in 1999, and now Oum El Banine's leadership is Moroccan. In my recent conversation with Mahjoura, the founder of Oum El Banine, she remarked to me that it was easier to operate when the organization was perceived as foreign, because conservative Moroccans saw this as less invasive. It allowed single motherhood to be viewed as a foreign concern, not a Moroccan one. So I see the work of Morocco-based single mother's organizations as that much more difficult, brave, and important. Not to mention the fact that a Moroccan director probably understands the complexities of the issue far better than a foreigner (like the founder interviewed in the Times article) does.

Close, but no cigar, New York Times.