Morocco and France signed, Monday, December 7 in Rabat, a declaration of intent in the field of justice relating to the care of unaccompanied minors.
Initialed by the Minister of Justice, Mohamed Benabdelkader and his French counterpart, Eric Dupond-Moretti, Keeper of the Seals, visiting the Kingdom, this declaration of intent concerns the dissemination of a procedural diagram which details the process of management of the situation of unaccompanied minors. Objective: to provide French juvenile magistrates with essential information to take the measures most suited to the best interests of the child.
It will also make the exchange of information more fluid and will help put in place concrete tools capable of solving a problem common to both countries, said Dupond-Moretti.
In this sense, the Keeper of the Seals affirmed that the protection of minors is a priority for both Morocco and France, thanking, in this regard, the Moroccan authorities “for the precious help they have given us, especially for the identification of unaccompanied minors, because without identification, no legal action is possible “.
Moroccan cooperation, he continued, enabled the French authorities to observe that “many of those who declared themselves to be minors were in fact of legal age and that Moroccan nationals, contrary to what is sometimes wrongly claimed, were not not the most numerous “.
In addition, Mr. Dupond-Moretti stressed that his visit to Morocco, which is his first official international trip since his appointment in this post, is of particular importance for him in view of the very close relations and deep ties and elders who unite the two countries, emphasizing the “long-standing exceptional partnership” between the two judicial authorities.
This partnership, he underlined, is nourished by dense exchanges in terms of training of magistrates and staff of the registries and modernization of justice, as well as by the “particularly effective and diligent treatment of the Moroccan authorities of our requests. mutual assistance which represents for us the most important flow outside the EU “.
For his part, Mr. Benabdelkader spoke of the quality of the cooperative relationship between the judicial authorities of the two countries, which he described as well structured, constantly adapted to new situations and strongly marked by a dense and regular dialogue, specifying that this meeting was an opportunity for the two parties to review the different aspects of Moroccan-French cooperation in the field of justice and to establish “a positive, satisfactory and promising assessment” both in criminal matters and ‘in civil matters.
An in-depth exchange on the perspectives of this cooperation for the next two years was also on the menu of discussions, said the minister, reiterating the common will of the two countries to further strengthen this building of partnership through a certain number of initiatives. and mechanisms, notably in the context of the Declaration of Intent on the care of unaccompanied minors.
On a two-day official visit to Morocco (6-7 December), the Minister of Justice of the French Republic, the Minister of Justice of the French Republic, Eric Dupond-Moretti, will meet with several other Moroccan officials.
