The issue of unaccompanied Moroccan minors in Spain is no longer merely a humanitarian matter left unresolved between two administrations, nor simply another chapter in the recurring migration crisis along the Moroccan-Spanish border. Following the latest wave of arrivals in Ceuta, which involved a large number of people, including minors, the issue has entered a more sensitive phase. A deeper question has now emerged: who has the authority to determine the future of these children? Who bears responsibility for their presence far from their families? And can the increasingly advanced political and security relations between Rabat and Madrid actually produce a solution when children find themselves caught between two legal and institutional systems?<\/p>\n
It was against this backdrop that Moroccan Justice Minister Abdelatif Ouahbi issued his firm statement, stressing that Morocco remains determined to recover its children and minors currently in Spain, including those who recently arrived in Ceuta or are being held in other centres, and that Rabat will demand their return \u201clegally and politically.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the surface, the message appears straightforward: Morocco wants its minor citizens back and considers their natural place to be with their families and in their homeland. But it is precisely the expression \u201clegally and politically\u201d that gives the statement its real weight. It moves the issue from a humanitarian request to an official demand: the return of the minors must become part of the bilateral political agenda and can no longer remain hostage to administrative delays or differences in judicial interpretation.<\/p>\n
This is where the first difficulty arises. A Moroccan minor in Spain cannot legally be treated like an adult who can simply be returned following an administrative decision. Minors fall under a specific protection regime requiring verification of identity, age, family circumstances and best interests. The 2007 Moroccan-Spanish agreement on cooperation concerning the protection and return of minors specifically provides for cooperation in identifying minors and locating their families, while respecting national law, international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The best interests of the child also constitute one of the foundations of that cooperation.<\/p>\n
This means that the issue cannot be reduced to a confrontation between a Morocco demanding its children and a Spain refusing to return them. The real dispute lies elsewhere, in a far more complex space: who determines the best interests of the child, on what basis, under what safeguards, and who assumes responsibility after the return?<\/strong> Morocco argues that the family and the homeland constitute the natural framework for the child\u2019s future. Spanish authorities, for their part, have legal obligations toward minors present on their territory that cannot simply be overridden by a political request.<\/p>\n The bilateral agreement itself shows that return is not an automatic procedure. It depends on the exchange of information, verification of identity and family links, and coordination between the competent authorities. It also requires agreement on the individual cases concerned. The strength of Morocco\u2019s position therefore does not lie solely in the firmness of its political language, but in its ability to transform that demand into a practical legal mechanism capable of dealing with individual cases and ensuring the safety of the child after return.<\/p>\n Yet the latest Ceuta crisis has added another dimension to the issue. A minor who might previously have been treated as an individual case within the migration system has, following the mass influx, become part of an exceptional crisis that has placed considerable pressure on Spain\u2019s child-protection structures and pushed the issue of minors to the centre of the political, security and social debate in Spain.<\/p>\n This evolution helps explain why Morocco has raised the tone of its response. The crisis has demonstrated that dealing with adults is fundamentally different from dealing with minors. A child cannot simply become a number in migration statistics, nor can a minor be returned through the same procedures applied to an adult. At the same time, keeping minors indefinitely in Spanish protection centres gradually turns the issue into an institutional and political problem for Madrid, while making it both a sovereignty issue and a humanitarian concern for Rabat.<\/p>\n But the strongest dimension of this case may not lie in what Rabat is saying to Madrid. It lies in what this issue is capable of saying to Morocco itself.<\/p>\n When Morocco demands the return of its children, it is relying, directly or indirectly, on a constitutional framework that also makes the protection of children a responsibility of the Moroccan state. Article 32 of the Constitution does not merely establish a general principle. It provides that the state works to ensure legal protection and social and moral consideration for all children, regardless of their family situation, while defining basic education as a right of the child and an obligation of the family and the state. Article 33 provides for appropriate measures in favour of young people, particularly those facing difficulties in school, social or professional integration, while Article 34 requires public policies for vulnerable groups.<\/p>\n This is where the image of a Moroccan minor crossing towards Ceuta becomes more than a painful image of migration. It becomes an image revealing the distance between the constitutional ceiling and social reality<\/strong>. It would be excessive to claim that every minor leaving Morocco does so because of poverty or school dropout, just as it would be simplistic to reduce the phenomenon to the failure of a single public policy. But the scale and recurrence of the phenomenon make a deeper question unavoidable: what makes some children and adolescents see the unknown beyond the border as an opportunity worth risking their lives for, when their own country is supposed to guarantee them protection and a future?<\/strong><\/p>\n This question does not arise in a vacuum. UNICEF has highlighted persistent challenges in school dropout and indicates that around 300,000 children leave Morocco\u2019s education system every year, with a significant part of the phenomenon concentrated in rural areas, where distance from schools and shortcomings in essential services remain obstacles to continued education. Educational and social vulnerability also remains closely linked to significant territorial disparities.<\/p>\n These figures do not establish that the minors in Ceuta are necessarily school dropouts or that they systematically come from poor families. Such a generalisation would not be supported by the available evidence. But they do make it difficult to view the phenomenon as a purely individual decision completely detached from the environment in which a child grows up. School, family, territory, training and employment opportunities together form the environment through which a young person develops an understanding of his or her own future.<\/p>\n This is where a profound political contradiction emerges in Ouahbi\u2019s position: the higher Morocco raises the level of its demand for the protection of its children abroad, the higher it also raises the level of its own responsibility toward children living inside Morocco.<\/strong> If Morocco tells Spain that the best place for a minor is with his or her family and in the homeland, then the question arising inside Morocco is both simple and difficult: what will that child find when he or she returns?<\/p>\n Return is not merely a border crossing in the opposite direction. It is the beginning of a new responsibility. What happens to the child who has left school? What about the adolescent coming from a territory with limited opportunities? What about the family that was unable to contain the child\u2019s desire to leave? What about the child who returns to the same environment that made the idea of departure sufficiently attractive to justify taking the risk? Is there a system capable of following these children and ensuring their educational, social and family reintegration, or will the state consider the case closed once they have crossed the border back into Morocco?<\/p>\n This is precisely where Article 32 of the Constitution ceases to be a mere legal reference and becomes a political mirror<\/strong>. The Constitution should not only serve as a basis for asking another state to protect Moroccan citizens; it should also be an instrument through which Morocco measures its own ability to honour its obligations toward its citizens. A child\u2019s departure is not, by itself, proof of state failure. But the repetition and scale of the phenomenon require an examination of the conditions that allow social or educational vulnerability to turn into a desire to leave.<\/p>\n The picture becomes broader when we move from childhood to the horizon of youth. Morocco\u2019s High Commission for Planning recorded a youth unemployment rate of 37.2% among those aged 15 to 24 in 2025. This figure does not directly concern the minors attempting to reach Ceuta, but it reveals the difficulty of the transition from school to the labour market and helps explain part of the social and psychological environment in which the future abroad can sometimes appear more attractive than the future at home.<\/p>\n The minors\u2019 issue therefore cannot be completely separated from a broader question concerning the path that begins at school and extends into employment. A child who cannot find a place within the education system, an adolescent who cannot find appropriate training and a young person who cannot find a job represent different situations, with different causes and responsibilities, but they can also form successive stages of the same social vulnerability.<\/p>\n Responsibility, however, does not lie with Morocco alone. Spain, for its part, cannot treat minors simply as an extension of the migration crisis. Spanish and European law impose clear obligations concerning child protection, and the transfer or return of a minor cannot take place outside the required legal safeguards. Any return must therefore be based on identification, verification of family ties and assessment of the environment to which the child will return, with the child\u2019s safety and best interests at the centre of the decision.<\/p>\n In this context, the principle of the best interests of the child<\/strong> becomes the point where the responsibilities of the two countries meet, rather than a slogan each side uses against the other. The best interests of the child do not automatically mean that the minor must remain in Spain, nor do they automatically mean that the child must return to Morocco. They mean that the decision must be based on the individual circumstances of the child, the family situation, safety, future prospects and the ability to reintegrate into the environment to which the child will be returned.<\/p>\n That is precisely what makes this issue bigger than a diplomatic dispute over the question of \u201cwho takes whom back\u201d. It is a test of the ability of two states linked by a strategic partnership to treat the child as a rights-holder before treating the child as an object within a migration file.<\/p>\n On the Spanish side, the issue has also become part of the domestic political debate over migration and the capacity of local authorities to accommodate minors. The Ceuta crisis has demonstrated how quickly child-protection centres can reach their limits, while the question of transferring minors to other parts of Spain can itself become a political issue. The child thus finds himself or herself at the intersection of law, migration, local politics and electoral pressure.<\/p>\n This is what gives particular significance to Ouahbi\u2019s statement that Morocco will demand its children back \u201clegally and politically\u201d. The deeper meaning is that Rabat does not want the issue to become an exclusively Spanish matter, governed solely by criteria established within Spanish institutions, while Morocco is ultimately left to receive the minors once a decision has been made. Rabat wants to remain a full participant in determining their future. In principle, this is consistent with the spirit of the bilateral agreement, which places identification, communication between authorities and consultation over returns at the heart of the cooperation mechanism.<\/p>\n But raising the political stakes will also put Morocco itself to the test of implementation. Demanding the return of minors requires functioning identification mechanisms, faster verification of family ties, guarantees for receiving returning children and genuine reintegration programmes. Otherwise, the political discourse will remain stronger than the mechanism supposed to turn it into reality.<\/p>\n The strength of Moroccan-Spanish relations therefore becomes part of the test itself. Rabat and Madrid have spent years describing their relationship as a strategic partnership, with broad cooperation in security, economics and migration. But strategic relations are not measured only when major files move in the desired direction. Their real value becomes visible when both partners confront a complex issue that neither can solve alone. If the two countries have succeeded in building advanced channels of cooperation, the minors\u2019 issue will test their ability to use those channels when sovereignty, law, child protection and domestic politics collide.<\/p>\n The child must therefore not become an instrument in the exchange of political messages between Rabat and Madrid. Morocco has the right to demand the protection and return of its citizens in accordance with the law. Spain has an obligation to protect minors present on its territory. But the child should not become hostage to disputes over responsibility, migration tensions or electoral calculations. At its core, the question is both simpler and more difficult: how can return be organised when return is genuinely in the child\u2019s best interests?<\/strong><\/p>\n This leads to the question neither country can avoid: what does return actually mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n If return simply means that a child crosses the border from Ceuta into Morocco, then the problem will have been dealt with geographically, but not socially. If, however, it means returning to the family, to school, to a system of protection and follow-up, with a genuine opportunity to rebuild the future, then return becomes public policy rather than an administrative procedure.<\/p>\n This is where the importance of the Moroccan Constitution becomes fully apparent. Article 32 does not merely give the state a basis for asserting that children are entitled to protection; it also imposes an obligation to ensure that such protection exists in everyday life. Education is a right. Social protection is a responsibility. Addressing vulnerability is an obligation. Equal opportunity cannot remain a constitutional formula. Whenever reality fails to translate these rights into concrete experiences, the border ceases, for some children, to be merely a geographical line. It becomes the image of another future they imagine on the other side.<\/p>\n That is why Abdelatif Ouahbi\u2019s firm statement should not be read only as a message to Madrid. Whether intended or not, it is also a message to Morocco itself. If Morocco is unwilling to abandon its children, as the minister says, then it must also be prepared to assume full responsibility for them after they return.<\/strong><\/p>\n The test is therefore twofold: can Spain and Morocco transform the \u201cbest interests of the child\u201d from a principle each side invokes separately into a genuinely operational joint mechanism? And can Morocco make the return of these minors a return towards the future, rather than simply a return to the place they once left?<\/p>\n Because the deepest question, in the end, is not simply: when will these children return?<\/strong><\/p>\n It is also: why did some of them feel compelled to seek their future beyond the border in the first place, and what will be done when they come back?<\/strong><\/p>\n The answer to these two questions will determine whether Ouahbi\u2019s position represents the beginning of a genuine solution to the minors\u2019 issue, or merely a shift from cautious cooperation to political assertion. A child\u2019s return may mark the end of a journey across a border. It will only mark the end of the problem when the country itself is capable of giving that child a reason to want to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The issue of unaccompanied Moroccan minors in Spain is no longer merely a humanitarian matter left unresolved between two administrations, nor simply another chapter in the recurring migration crisis along the Moroccan-Spanish border. Following the latest wave of arrivals in Ceuta, which involved a large number of people, including minors, the issue has entered a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43,42,41,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa","category-asia-americas","category-europe-russia","category-middle-east","category-the-maghreb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4641,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions\/4641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}