Why We Need Intersectional Feminist Perspectives on Land Justice in Morocco?

In Morocco, collective land is an umbrella term to designate different types of lands throughout the Kingdom that are collectively owned by ethnic and tribal communities across the country. One type of such lands, and the most common, are soulali lands. These lands are managed by the historical communities who are entitled to use them, and they have never been privately owned until the last few decades, when the state started institutionalizing privatization processes, which had already started during the French colonization1 through the Dahir (decree) of April 27, 1919. It is this legal text that began the weakening of the prerogatives of these communities over their land.

Soulaliyate of el-Gharb: A movement for gender equality or land justice?

The North-Western region of Morocco or el-Gharb (L’Gharb), formerly known as El Gharb-Chrarda-Béni Hssen2 prior to the regional découpage of 2015, which has been merged with the region of Rabat - the Moroccan capital - is today known as Rabat-Salé-Kénitra. The fertile plains of this tempered region and its proximity to the Atlantic ocean made it attractive during the French protectorate, as colonizers turned it into a major agricultural settlement of irrigated farmland and new military portuary (e.g. Kénitra). After Morocco gained its independence in 1956, access to land became a major issue in the region. While private investors among national and international elites were taking over these agricultural lands, the pastoral tribes who had usufructuary rights over these lands since their settlement into the country in the 14th and 16th century were now struggling to retain access to its resources in the face of accelerated land privatization policies, due to the region's increasing population density3 and rapid urbanization. It is important to note here that, compared to areas managed by governments or private entities, research shows that when Indigenous populations and local communities hold secure land rights, their territories are associated with lower rates of deforestation, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, better biodiversity protection, and improved livelihoods. Consequently, indigenous land rights become a critical pillar for climate action, and ultimately environmental justice.

Research shows that when Indigenous populations and local communities hold secure land rights, their territories are associated with lower rates of deforestation, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, better biodiversity protection, and improved livelihoods

In the face of these fast and imminent changes in policies towards collective land, and privatization in the name of development, tribal communities, “soulaliyines”, of el-Gharb region started making rash and sometimes individualistic decisions in order to guarantee themselves some benefits from these lands. One of the consequences of these processes was the systematic exclusion of women from these communities in the decision-making processes about the future of their lands, but also from compensation4 following the handover of collective lands to the state and/or private proprietors. Therefore, in 2007, women from the soulali community of Hadada (Province Kénitra; El Gharb-Chrarda-Béni Hssen region) started protesting these injustices and created a strong movement, which included soulaliyate from other communities in el-Gharb region and beyond, and is active until this day. Their collective action was met with resistance, both from their own communities and from the supervisory authority over collective lands, i.e. the Department of Rural Affairs of the Ministry of Interior. For some soulaliyines, the justification of this exclusion was found in the Shari’a, while others referred to the ‘Urf of their respective communities. As for the Ministry of Interior, it refused to intervene in the internal affairs of the soulali council (Jma’a), claiming it is outside of its prerogative. The soulaliyate’ struggle, framed as feminist by the media, led to the relative success of their movement according to media accounts, because the legislation on collective lands had been updated5 and the first women naibat were elected in 2019. In the midst of negotiations and protests for gender equality in land privatization processes, there was very little talk about why the communities were conceding their land in the first place.

In fact, the media discourses reveal a dichotomy between two different framings of collective action by soulali communities, which lack intersectional complexity. On the one hand, the media frame the soulaliyate movement as a feminist one, referring to soulaliyate as a homogeneous entity of women with no further racial, ethnic, or regional identity, and whose demands are solely focused on gender equality rather than the rightful claim to land itself. It is even heralded across a diverse range of media platforms6 as one of the symbols of Moroccan women’s fight for gender equality. On the other hand, the more critical media platforms that report on the Amazigh movement’s demands show that this movement focuses on the rightful claim to collective land for indigenous populations. Although these platforms' discourse about the Amazigh’s collective action reflects their support and solidarity with the soulaliyate movement for gender equality, it still portrays the movement as genderless. Therefore, in this binary discourse between a feminist, women-driven soulaliyate movement and an indigenous Amazigh movement for land justice,7 where are Amazigh soulaliyate situated? Are they invisibilized as women in the discourse on the Amazigh movement, or are they invisibilized as Amazigh in the discourse on the soulaliyate movement?

Between erasure and misrepresentation: how to re-center Amazigh soulaliyate in the  media discourse? 

There is an overrepresentation in the media of soulaliyate from el-Gharb.8 Paradoxically, according to the data collected by the Ministry of Interior in 2010, el-Gharb is also the region with the least amount of land left in the hands of tribal communities (between 100,000 ha and 500,000 ha approximately). Unlike certain Black communities9 who are nonexistent in the discourse (media or otherwise) on collective lands, Amazigh women are misrepresented and partially erased, specifically when it comes to their active role in organizing collective action for soulali lands. They are often referred to in a handful of articles about the state of gender equality in Morocco, focusing on the intersection of oppressions afflicting rural Amazigh women. The dates on which such articles appear often coincide with the publication of research and reports on gender inequality around International Women’s Day. Although it is important to disseminate accessible information about the state of gender equality, the lack of diversity in the discourse representing women remains an issue. Rural Amazigh women face many challenges disproportionately, from the lack of access to health care services, to literacy and economic precarity. But only acknowledging this reality does not tell the whole story. Unlike the depoliticized discursive imaginary created around Amazigh women as helpless victims subjected to the harshness of their socio-ecological environments, without questioning the colonial and patriarchal power structures behind such inequality, Amazigh women are neither a homogeneous group nor passively suffering their fate. They have always resisted all forms of discrimination they have been subjected to.

Amazigh women are misrepresented and partially erased, specifically when it comes to their active role in organizing collective action for soulali lands

Historically, the European colonial imaginary around the Amazigh woman shifted between helplessness and annoyance.10 Officers of the French protectorate believed that they needed to be saved from men, and from Arabs, justifying the presence of French officers in rural courts throughout the country. However, Amazigh women quickly became an annoyance for these officers as they had extensive recourse to these courts in their fight for their rights, as anthropologist Katherine Hoffman observes in her archival work about the justice system in the Moroccan Anti-Atlas.11 In a continuation of the colonial narrative, today’s media depict Amazigh women in a passive way that dwells on their misery with almost no counter-discourse: only one article in my media discourse analysis12 included an Amazigh activist woman, who openly identifies as such, and whose accounts are reported and quoted in the first person. Furthermore, when this same media isn’t representing Amazigh women as passively suffering in their villages, and making up statistics for international organizations and donor agencies, they become an annoyance for the authorities when they actively seek (land) justice for themselves and their communities.

Considering that there are no detailed racial and ethnic statistics in Morocco, I focused on discourse analysis of media articles covering soulaliyate mobilizations in majority Amazigh-speaking regions and provinces, such as Souss-Massa and Drâa-Tafilalet regions13 or Ifrane province. Some differences stand out in the ways in which the media describes the soulaliyate’ struggles in these areas, compared to el-Gharb. Firstly, the media discourse does not frame collective action by soulali communities in these areas as an exclusively feminist issue. Even when these soulali movements are mixed or led by a majority of women, their reported demands do not systematically put a hierarchy between the rightful claim to their land, the necessity to include their communities in the development of the region, and ensuring gender equality in all processes and policies. There have been far less media accounts of success about soulaliyate women outside of el-Gharb. Feminist NGOs that supported the soulaliyate of el-Gharb attributed this failure to the lack of female representation in the communities’ councils (jma’a) as naibat. However, the election of women as naibat in el-Gharb’s soulali communities is a mere symbolic success. The naibat have been met with such hostility in a male-dominated environment that their agency to impact change has been rather limited. 

Secondly, some media report more instances of violence against protesters in majority Amazigh areas, compared to el-Gharb as an example. While the media discourse frames the violence faced by the soulaliyate of el-Gharb as either institutional or societal (i.e. from men in their own communities), in majority Amazigh regions, the reports on violence faced by soulaliyate is rather perpetrated by law enforcement, ranging from an overwhelming police presence during protests, to the death of a woman during a soulaliyate protest in the province of Ifrane (Fès-Meknès region). While human rights NGOs openly supported this protest and the family of the deceased, feminist NGOs and soulaliyate from other regions remained silent, which is an indication of the limitations of the soulaliyate movement’s scope of action.

The election of women as naibat in el-Gharb’s soulali communities is a mere symbolic success. The naibat have been met with such hostility in a male-dominated environment that their agency to impact change has been rather limited

Fadma Aït Mous and Yasmine Berriane’s research on the soulaliyate movement14 suggests that the focus on gender equality was a conscious strategic choice taken up by the soulaliyate movement of el-Gharb, partly on the advice of institutionalized feminist NGOs such as the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women (ADFM).15 The logic behind this choice was to increase the likeliness of winning a battle for gender equality in comparison to a seemingly lost cause of reclaiming land justice within a human rights frame.

Through a media discourse that unifies, but also essentializes soulaliyate women in the whole country as experiencing similar oppressions, combined with the strategic choice to mainly focus on gender equality through legal reforms, the soulaliyate movement has been relatively successful. However, this monolithic perspective on soulaliyate women and their movement is a double-edged sword. For example, newly elected women representatives of soulali communities (naibat) and the ADFM activists deplore the evasiveness of the long-awaited new laws regulating collective lands with regards to gender equality, and their increased focus on the institutionalization of collective land privatization, compared to gender equality.

Although the soulaliyate movement, as framed initially by communities of el-Gharb and the ADFM, is reported to be expanding to majority Amazigh regions, through activities such as workshops and informative caravanes traveling throughout the country, an intersectional feminist rhetoric is still absent from the discourse on soulaliyate women.

But why should it matter?

Imagining land justice from a feminist, decolonial reading of Amazigh law

Even though the strategic choices made by el-Gharb’s soulaliyate opened many doors for other soulaliyate, they are also starting to reach their limits. While some feminist activists are carefully observing how the new legislation governing collective lands will be enforced in terms of gender equality, there is hardly any collective land left to redistribute in some areas, as is the case in Tinghir and Zagora in the Drâa-Tafilalet region. The media discourse has also been misleading at times, when news articles did not hesitate to hint that the success of the soulaliyate movement is a first step towards equality in inheritance for all Moroccan women. In reality, nothing suggests any change in this direction. The Shari’a has always granted part of the inheritance to women, even though not on equal footing with men. The fate of the soulaliyate was an exception to this rule, because their land was not private property and these matters were the prerogative of each community’s ‘Urf. Some communities historically had no issue passing land use rights to their spouses and daughters, while others were more reluctant to adopt such practices.16 Such is the arbitrariness of ‘Urf (or Azrf in Amazigh), which also offers a certain level of freedom of interpretation and flexibility towards change. 

Some communities historically had no issue passing land use rights to their spouses and daughters, while others were more reluctant to adopt such practices

Where Shari’a does not apply, as it is the case now with soulali lands, it can be interesting to look into Amazigh jurisprudence to move the conversation about soulaliyate beyond the dichotomy of gender equality versus land justice. Historically, Amazigh women have always navigated between Fiqh and ‘Urf in matters of divorce and inheritance, and have extensively had recourse to courts. Just like their male counterparts, they had recourse to one justice system or the other depending on which one benefited them the most, so that even in cases where they did not inherit land per se, they could always benefit from a compensation for the shares they gave up. In the ‘Urf of the Anti-Atlas, two legal institutions were common with regards to land inheritance: Aukerda (Skipping a generation) and Tayisi (Renouncing land).17 As much as these practices may seem exclusionary for women, they can be used in their favor if interpreted and enforced from a feminist perspective. The practice of Aukerda ensures that the woman’s lineage inherits the land through her, while the choice of Tayisi could be strategic in the cases where the land is not fertile or if the woman lives far away and cannot tend to it, and therefore prefers to renounce it against a compensation of equal value. Either way, for these ‘Urf legal concepts to be empowering and ensure land justice, the process towards their implementation and enforcement requires the political participation and involvement of various Moroccan stakeholders in their diversity and intersectional gendered, ethnic, racial and socioeconomic identities, abilities, and knowledge.

This includes, among many others, Amazigh women who have experience and intergenerational knowledge about the practice of indigenous legal institutions, such as the NGO “IMSLI - The Voice of the Amazigh Woman”, which calls for the enforcement of Article 49 of the “Moudawana”18 through an Amazigh feminist understanding. This law, which is meant to protect the financial rights of both spouses upon marriage and not until divorce, was openly inspired from the Amazigh practice of Tmazzalt.19 This practice has carefully taken into account women’s unpaid reproductive labor in the equal separation of the wealth accumulated by the household in case of divorce. However, differences in legal interpretation and enforcement that drift away from the concept of Tmazzalt has pushed the members of IMSLI to recentre the Amazigh feminist perspective in the egalitarian implementation of Article 49 the Family Code. Similarly, one can imagine Aukerda and Tayisi as legal concepts that benefit women throughout the country, as long as the institutionalization process fully involves intersectional feminists who take into account identity and knowledge, including Amazigh feminists.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

Note: This article was produced in cooperation with the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Morocco Office. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Morocco Office.

• 1. The French protectorate in Morocco officially lasted from 1912 until 1956.
• 2. Referred to as el-Gharb throughout the article.
• 3. Second highest in the country. Source: Haut Commissariat au Plan du Maroc.
• 4. Agreements on types of compensation were decided on a case-by-case basis. There were financial compensations and/or compensation in the form of plots of land in other areas.
• 5. In 2019, the parliament passed a bill for the laws no. 62.17, 63.17 and 64.17, which further define the terms of the administrative prerogatives of the Ministry of Interior over the affairs of ethnic and tribal collectivities, the rules of land demarcation processes over these collectivities, and the restriction of the definition of collective lands to the ones situated in irrigated agricultural perimeters, excluding the ones that fall into the prerogatives of urban planning. The texts also explicitly refer to gender equality in broad terms in accordance with the Article 19 of the new Constitution of 2011.
• 6. Between March 2019 and January 2020, when the new laws governing collective lands were being voted in parliament, governmental media platforms such as the Moroccan Press Agency (MAP), but also the more critical such as Telquel or specialized such as L'Économiste, published several articles applauding the victory of the soulaliyate movement.
• 7. Land justice means protecting land from development and extraction, regenerating the health of the land, and expanding equity and access to people who have been dispossessed of land.
• 8. Among news articles about collective lands from 5 well-known Moroccan media platforms during the past decade, more than half of them that address the topic from a gendered perspective are about a community in el-Gharb. The remaining articles address gender equality in all the other regions of the country combined.
• 9. Such as the descendents of Guich Al-Bukhari who also had rights over collective lands since the reign of Moulay Ismail (17th century).
• 10. Katherine Hoffman, Anthropology in the Archives: History in Gendered Testimony and Text. Hespéris tamuda/Université Mohammed V, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, 2021, p. 36.
• 11. Ibid. p. 38.
• 12. This article is based on a wider research about the media discourse on the soulaliyate movement in Morocco. The analysis is based on a selection of articles published between 2011 and 2021, from different written media outlets representing diverse political positions.
• 13. Formerly known as one region, “Souss-Massa-Drâa”.
• 14. Fadma Aït Mous and Yasmine Berriane, « Femmes, droit à la terre et lutte pour l’égalité au Maroc: Le mouvement des soulaliyates », In Hassan Rachik (dir.), Contester le droit. Communautés, familles et héritage au Maroc (Casablanca : La Croisée des chemins), 2016, p. 87-173.
• 15. The Democratic Association of Moroccan Women (Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc) is one of the oldest and most established feminist NGOs in Morocco.
• 16. Fadma Aït Mous and Yasmine Berriane, « Femmes, droit à la terre et lutte pour l’égalité au Maroc: Le mouvement des soulaliyate », In Hassan Rachik (dir.), Contester le droit. Communautés, familles et héritage au Maroc (Casablanca : La Croisée des chemins), 2016, p. 87-173.
• 17. Katherine Hoffman, Anthropology in the Archives: History in Gendered Testimony and Text. Hespéris tamuda/Université Mohammed V, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, 2021, p. 35-58.
• 18. The Moroccan Family Code of 2004.
• 19. Tmazzalt has been equated with the concept of “al-kad wa as-si’aya”, even though there are differences of interpretation in implementation and enforcement.