On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Morocco LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Morocco, visit our Morocco Legal Assistance page.
COI Experts
Tel: +44 20 76 04 30 27
Email: email@georgejoffe.com / Skype: george.joffe
Professor Joffé is prepared to provide country of origin experts witness statements for Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morroco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. He is now retired but is still affiliated to the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Until 2017, Professor Joffé was an affiliated lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) in the University of Cambridge, where he also ran the Centre for North African Studies. From 2005 to 2010, he was a research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. From 1997 to 2000, Professor Joffé was the deputy director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He regularly addresses professional audiences at the NATO Defence College in Rome, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Geneva, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and NOREF in Oslo and the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. He has also advised the European Commission (DG Relex), EuropeAid and the new External Action Service.
Email: h.g.dehaas@uva.nl
Dr Hein de Haas is Co-Director of the International Migration Institute (IMI) of the Department of International Development and the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the links between migration and processes of development and globalisation. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in the Middle East and North Africa and, particularly, Morocco. He has published on a wide range of issues including the impact of migration on social, political and economic change in countries of origin, remittances and transnationalism, and migration determinants.
Email: jmundy@colgate.edu
Dr Jacob Mundy (PhD, University of Exeter 2010) is an Associate Professor in the Peace and Conflict Studies and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Colgate University. He has written asylum support letters for clients in the United States and the United Kingdom coming from Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. During the 2018–2019 academic year, serving as a Fulbright Scholar, he was a visiting professor with the International Political Economy program at the Tunis Business School, part of the Université de Tunis. His research examines foreign involvement in armed conflicts in Northwest Africa. He has conducted field- and archival work in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. He is willing to discuss writing support letters or reports for cases involving (1) the political persecution of Sahrawis (Western Saharans) and Imazighen/Berbers (Morocco and Algeria); (2) victims of terrorism and state persecution related to the civil conflict in 1990s Algeria; and (3) persons affected by the civil conflict in Libya since 2011.
Email: katja.zvanelliott@gmail.com
Dr Katja Žvan Elliott was an Associate Professor in North African and Middle East Studies at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. She has conducted field research since 2006 and lived and worked in Morocco from 2012 – 2022. Her research focusses on gender and politics, North Africa, social justice, al-hogra, neoliberal authoritarianism, human rights and legal reforms in authoritarian contexts, for which she conducted fieldwork in different parts of provincial and rural Morocco where she worked with low-income, politically and economically marginalised communities. She is currently writing a manuscript entitled ‘Failed’ Women of Morocco: Narratives of Lives in Poverty. This book looks at the dispossessing nature of contemporary neoliberal (semi-)authoritarian regimes through the eyes of low-income women. Prior to this research project, she wrote on the politics of 2004 Family Law reform which involved in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in one of Morocco’s poorest provinces in the south of the country.
Email: leslie.gross-wyrtzen@yale.edu
Dr Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen (PhD, Clark University) is a postdoctoral associate with the Council for African Studies and a Faculty Fellow (2019-2020) in the Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. Her research focuses on border governance and migration management policies in Morocco and in countries along migratory routes from West Africa to the Maghreb. Her ethnographic research highlights the ways that humanitarian migration and asylum policies differentially impact West and Central African refugees and migrants along axes of gender, ethnicity and race, and religion. She has held instructional positions at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane and conducted research in Morocco with support from a Fulbright-Hays fellowship.
Email: rebwar@mideastconsultancy.com or info@mideastconsultancy.com
Dr Rebwar Fatah is the Director of the Middle East Consultancy Services. Dr Fatah has produced thousands of COI reports since he began working as an expert witness in 2000. In the past five years alone, Dr Fatah has produced 1,341 Expert Reports on the Middle East. These include:
- 830 Country Expert Reports
- 416 Document Authentication Reports
- 95 Nationality Reports
Dr Fatah’s reports have been commissioned for and cited in several immigration appeals, as well as family and criminal cases. Moreover, he has assessed many people from the Middle East whose nationality, native language, ethnicity, place of residence has been disputed, and has examined thousands of documents from the MENA region. In addition to a deep knowledge of the region’s administrative and bureaucratic cultures, Dr Fatah’s multilingual proficiencies enable him to understand, interpret and evaluate official documents in the Middle East. As a part of this work, Dr Fatah has produced his own methodology for document authentications and nationality examinations.
Dr Fatah has also provided written and oral evidence in court; among them are five Country Guidance Cases, two Turkish extradition orders and many other cases. Moreover, Dr Fatah has also reviewed and provided guidance on Home Office CPIN reports.
Dr Fatah regularly visits the Middle East, conducting fact-finding missions to ensure that his knowledge is up to date and based on reliable information. Dr Fatah speaks most of the Middle Eastern languages as well as their various dialects. Dr Fatah’s Country Expert Reports cover a wide range of issues, including the general security situation, sufficiency of protection, crimes of honour, healthcare, corruption, and at-risk groups of different sexual, religious, political and cultural profiles.
Email: gabbay@muslimworldexpert.com
Dr Shaul Gabbay acts as a resource for immigration attorneys seeking advice, counsel and expert testimony in asylum cases. Formerly the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East at the University of Denver, he has published extensively on cultures and customs in all Muslim countries, persecution issues based on family dishonour, gender and homosexuality, and sociology and politics of the Muslim world. Professor Gabbay’s expertise helps immigration attorneys and judges understand key societal issues and trends in the Muslim world that have life-threatening repercussions for Muslim immigrants throughout the U.S. at risk of deportation. His oral testimony and written analysis draw on his extensive knowledge and examination of cultural practices in Muslim countries as well as his life experience growing up in the Middle East. More information is on his website www.muslimworldexpert.com.
Email: eddouada@yahoo.com
Dr Souad Eddouada is an Academic Director of the School of International Training (SIT) program on Migration and Transnational Identity since 2010 and Professor at Iben Tofail University in Kenitra, Morocco. Her five years of involvement with SIT migration programme implied a daily work with migration studies students, activists and policy makers on issues related to migration, refugees and asylum seekers. Her direction of the program involves designing and teaching classes on: Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Morocco, Moroccan Residents Abroad, gender and migration and Post 2011 uprisings social movements that include migrants and refuges movements in Morocco. In addition to her academic work on women Left behind, Souad also supervises students research on migration, refugees and asylum seekers. Since 2010, Souad has supervised around 138 research projects on Moroccan Migration Policy and migrants and refugees rights, migrants activism from Africa South of the Sahara, migrant single mothers in Rabat and elsewhere in the country. She has studied at Mohammed V University and has been a Post Doctoral fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton New Jersey, at Lund University in Lund. Conducted research in Tunisia and gave lectures in Finland, Stockholm Sweden, Germany, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Italy and published widely in her field.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
‘Authorities continued to crush dissent, disperse peaceful protests and restrict the activities of several organizations they deemed oppositional. They tightened their crackdown on Sahrawi activists. Criminalization of abortion led to at least one girl dying as a result of an unsafe abortion following rape. Border guards used excessive force against people attempting to cross the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, causing at least 37 deaths. Domestic legislation remained inadequate to protect and promote the right to a clean and healthy environment.’
‘Migratory flows in North Africa are characterized by their complexity: the varied typology of migrants moving to the region,
the varied nature of push and pull factors, the changeable migratory routes and migrants’ objectives, expectations and
plans in addition to the political, social and economic differences between countries, play a role in the structure and nature of
migratory flows in the region. Its geographical position between Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, and its own political situation –
particularly after the Arab Spring in 2011 – have made migratory flows in North Africa more complex in nature. Hundreds of
thousands of people have moved to, through and from the region over the last few years, for different purposes and needs.’
The present Country of Origin (COI) report focuses on Moroccan males who are victims of human trafficking
in Europe. Morocco has a history of being a country of transit, destination and origin of migrants. Since the 1990s, legislation in many European countries has been restricting legal entry, but many Moroccans still attempt migrating to Europe in the pursuit of securing better livelihoods. UNICEF in Spain has in 2018 registered that 68 % of unaccompanied minors were from Morocco.
This report responds to recent trends in cases regarding Moroccan asylum seekers in Denmark that show an increase in asylum claims revolving around being a victim of human trafficking, and that the majority of these were male minors. Therefore the present report describes the phenomena of migration of Moroccans to Europe, the Moroccan law on human trafficking from 2016 as well as available assistance to and protection for victims of trafficking in Morocco.
This Country of Origin Information (COI) Report has been produced by the COI Service, United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA), for use by officials involved in the asylum/human rights determination process. The Report provides general background information about the issues most commonly raised in asylum/human rights claims made in the United Kingdom. The main body of the report includes information available up to 12 October 2010. The report was issued on 9 November 2010.
‘The Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families this afternoon concluded its consideration of the second periodic report of Morocco, with Committee Experts commending the State Party’s evolving legal framework on migrants, and raising issues concerning the rights of children of migrant workers and the events of 24 June, 2022 occurring at the State border in Melilla.’
Morocco Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Morocco.
Morocco LGBTQI+ Resources
Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in Morocco.
We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.
Last updated June 2023