Aya, 16, veiled, wins her case against the ban on wearing the hijab imposed by her Victor Hugo high school in Marrakech
Establishments under the Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE) persist in prohibiting veiled students from accessing classrooms, a discrimination inspired by French law but prohibited by Moroccan law.
The controversy over the wearing of symbols or clothing by which students ostentatiously demonstrate their religious affiliation at school has migrated from France to Morocco. Long kept quiet, this constraint was practiced in our country. It was passed over in silence. Until the case of Aya T., aged 16 and a half, broke out. A second-year student at the Lycée français Victor Hugo in Marrakech, an establishment affiliated with the AEFE (Agency for French Education Abroad), Aya, like other students who wore the veil out of conviction, was always denied access to class until she removed her Hijab.
Personal freedom
Her mother, tired of the unjustified and intolerable attitudes of the management of this high school under the French cultural mission in Morocco, decided to break the silence and bring the case to court. The trial opened on Thursday, June 20, 2024. It was expeditious. It only lasted 24 hours! The first session was postponed by twenty-four hours due to a procedural defect. The plaintiff’s lawyer was to take the Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE) to court. This was rectified the next day. On Friday, June 21, 2024, the interim relief judge, vice-president of the court of first instance, delivered the judgment. He ordered the French High School to let Aya wear her hijab, under penalty of a penalty of 500 dirhams per day of delay, with immediate application and obligation to pay the costs.
Banning Aya from wearing her hijab is a violation of her fundamental rights, including the right to belief and the right to education. At the scene, a bailiff observed firsthand that Aya T. was banned from attending her class on June 10, 2024. Before the court, Aya’s defense, represented by Mr. Khalid Kouias, a lawyer at the Marrakech Bar, supported its argument with an email sent to Aya’s parents by the school management, on the night of Friday to Saturday, at precisely 1 a.m., “informing” them of their daughter’s absence due to wearing non-compliant clothing, which was “inadmissible,” arguing that the school’s internal regulations prohibit ostentatious religious symbols.
The school’s lawyer tried to justify the ban by referring to French education law and internal regulations. But the plaintiff’s lawyer, Me Kouias, pleaded for Aya’s freedom. He recalled that wearing the hijab does not harm public order or good morals. He destroyed the arguments of the AEFE lawyer by recalling that Article 451-1 and Article 911-42 of the law emphasize that educational establishments falling under the cultural mission are under the supervision of the Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE) and that the cooperation and development agreement linking Rabat to Paris, signed on July 25, 2003, does not include any allusion to religious symbols.
Common discrimination
Better still, this agreement obliges the AEFE to comply with the law of the host country. In this sense, Mr. Kouias adds that the Constitution of the Kingdom, which formally recalls that Islam is the religion of the State, insists on respect for human rights and children, by the international conventions that Morocco has ratified and which prohibit any discrimination based on race, color or religion. Also, he explains, that establishments under the French education system abroad must comply with the law of the country of residence.
“This is a victory that could be a game-changer for the rights of young Muslim women educated in French establishments abroad. It is a judgment which marks the sovereignty of Moroccan law and which reframes these foreign educational establishments which believe themselves to be “protected” and “untouchable” in the kingdom,” Mr. Khalid Kouias tells us.
This decision echoes case law dated November 25, 2020, in Kenitra. The court of first instance had pronounced a judgment in favor of a student from the Don Bosco school wearing the Hijab and who was banned from accessing the class. It is therefore a new legal victory capable of putting an end to the discrimination suffered by Moroccan students in French and Belgian schools in Morocco. This case, which raises essential questions about the country’s sovereignty, religious freedom, and cultural identity, has encouraged other parents to denounce these practices which are commonplace in French and Belgian mission schools in Morocco. , in Casablanca, in Rabat, in Kenitra…
“I am the mother who led the fight since September at the Lycée Descartes in Rabat for my daughter… El Hamdoulillah we won our case without having to go to court! I was accompanied by my lawyer and a bailiff.” This message reached Me Said Maâch, a lawyer at the Casablanca bar and a major community activist. It was sent to him by a mother who intervened for a student who was banned from taking a class photo because she wore a Hijab. “I learned about Marrakech.
It’s perfect because it’s been dragging on for several months; I couldn’t go to all the establishments… Someone has just written to me about the Belgian school in Rabat. I am contacted every day… I would like to help everyone but it is impossible… I think we need to make this decision official, I will contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other institutes to get things moving…”, -she writes in a state of distress.
This means that the decision of the Marrakech court in the Aya case brings hope to all parents who are fighting against the discrimination that their children are subjected to daily. There is still work to be done. At the Lycée Victor Hugo in Marrakech, the principal asked teachers, in an email, in light of the judgment of the court of first instance, to “not create any conflict with veiled girls during this period of exams and end of the year” and to “accept them in their classes”. This means that this instruction is not valid outside of this period. The bans and reprisals can resume as soon as the next school year starts.
