On May 13th 2016, the German Parliament approved a bill which classified the Maghreb states as safe countries of origin. For Moroccan citizens hoping to immigrate to Germany, this meant that their cases will likely be dismissed as there is no legal presumption that applicants from the Maghreb states face persecution based on their nationality. The aim of this bill seems to have been to shorten the amount of time it takes to go through all asylum applications. In return, the Moroccan government will be granted some concessions in regards to the West Sahara conflict by the German government.
However, several NGOs have cited human rights violations in Morocco. For example, homosexuality is an offense punishable by imprisonment of up to three years. Additionally, there are many Sahrawi refugees in Algeria who continue to seek asylum after the Western Sahara War.
Participating author: Najat El Hachmi
Najat El Hachmi was born in Morocco in 1979 and moved to Spain in 1987. She has a degree in Arab Studies from the University of Barcelona. Her first novel L’últim patriarca(Planeta, 2008), won the Ramon Llull Prize 2008 and the Prix Ulysse, and was a big bestseller; it has been translated into 11 languages. Following the publication of her second novel, La caçadora de cossos (Columna-Planeta, 2011), her latest work to be published is La filla estrangera (Edicions 62, 2015), which won the BBVA Saint Joan Novel Award and the Ciutat de Barcelona Catalan Fiction Award. She is currently working on her next novel.