{"id":4648,"date":"2026-08-11T18:20:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/?p=4648"},"modified":"2026-08-11T19:41:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:41:21","slug":"4648-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/4648-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Wahbi to Madrid: \u201cGive Us Back Our Children\u201d \u2026 We Stand by Our Territories Against a \u201cComplex and Politicized\u201d Spanish Judiciary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The latest wave of mass crossings into Ceuta has left behind more than a temporary border crisis. It has brought back to the forefront one of the most sensitive issues in Moroccan-Spanish relations: the fate of unaccompanied Moroccan minors. While most of the adults who entered the city have returned to Morocco, the minors remain at the heart of the impasse because their legal status is different and their presence in Ceuta cannot be handled through the same procedures applied to adults. In the aftermath of the crisis, available information points to a significant number of minors remaining under the responsibility of the Spanish authorities, while Rabat has expressed its readiness to cooperate in identifying those who are Moroccan and arranging their return, in line with royal instructions to the Ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs to assist in identifying and repatriating them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yet Moroccan Justice Minister Abdellatif Wahbi did not present the issue in his interview with Deutsche Welle as a mere technical dispute over migration procedures. He shifted it to another level: the responsibility of the state toward its own children. That changes the entire perspective. According to the argument developed by the minister, Morocco is not asking Spain to get rid of a human burden that has become too heavy for Ceuta, nor is it seeking an administrative way out of a crisis created by mass crossings. Rabat is saying that Moroccan minors whose identity and nationality have been established should return to their families and their country, and that the Moroccan state is ready to assume responsibility for them. This is the context in which Wahbi\u2019s statement that \u201cminors have rights but no obligations\u201d acquires its full meaning: it seeks to remove the child from the logic of responsibility for crossing the border and place him or her within the logic of protection and care.<\/p>\n<div class=\"xb57i2i x1q594ok x5lxg6s x78zum5 xdt5ytf x6ikm8r x1ja2u2z x1pq812k x1rohswg xfk6m8 x1yqm8si xjx87ck xx8ngbg xwo3gff x1n2onr6 x1oyok0e x1odjw0f x1iyjqo2 xy5w88m\">\n<div class=\"x78zum5 xdt5ytf x1iyjqo2 x1n2onr6 xaci4zi x129vozr\">\n<div class=\"html-div xdj266r x14z9mp xat24cr x1lziwak xexx8yu xyri2b x18d9i69 x1c1uobl x78zum5 xdt5ytf x1iyjqo2 x7ywyr2\">\n<div class=\"x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x9f619 x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xyamay9\">\n<div class=\"x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x1iyjqo2 x2lwn1j\">\n<div class=\"x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xf7dkkf xv54qhq x1k70j0n xzueoph xzboxd6 x14l7nz5\">\n<div class=\"x6s0dn4 xal61yo x1obq294 x5a5i1n xde0f50 x15x8krk x78zum5 xdt5ytf x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1n2onr6 xh8yej3\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"xl1xv1r\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?height=476&amp;href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Freel%2F1534923387830326%2F&amp;show_text=false&amp;width=267&amp;t=0\" width=\"267\" height=\"476\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">That distinction lies at the heart of the Moroccan position. Rabat wants to prevent the act committed by a minor from becoming a permanent justification for keeping that child outside the country, while drawing a clear line between the child\u2019s responsibility for entering Ceuta and the responsibility of the state and the family for determining the child\u2019s future. From the Moroccan perspective, therefore, the question is no longer why the minor entered, but why the child remains separated from the family once identity and nationality have been established, and why the return process becomes an open-ended sequence of administrative approvals, judicial considerations and legal constraints. Wahbi\u2019s argument rests on a straightforward principle: a child is not an adult migrant who has freely chosen an individual project; a minor is precisely someone who does not possess full legal capacity to determine his or her own future.<\/p>\n<div class=\"x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xf7dkkf xv54qhq x1k70j0n xzueoph xzboxd6 x14l7nz5\">\n<div class=\"x6s0dn4 xal61yo x1obq294 x5a5i1n xde0f50 x15x8krk x78zum5 xdt5ytf x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1n2onr6 xh8yej3\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"xl1xv1r\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?height=314&amp;href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Freel%2F1029249676584689%2F&amp;show_text=false&amp;width=560&amp;t=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"314\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xuk3077 xf7dkkf xv54qhq x1k70j0n xzueoph xzboxd6 x14l7nz5\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Spain, however, cannot respond to this demand through a simple political decision. This is what makes the issue considerably more complicated than political statements from either side might suggest. Spanish law requires an individualized assessment of each minor\u2019s situation, and return does not become automatic merely because Moroccan nationality has been established. The 2007 Moroccan-Spanish agreement on cooperation in preventing irregular migration of minors, protecting them and organizing their coordinated return is indeed intended to facilitate their return to their families or to child-protection institutions in Morocco, but the process remains subject to Spanish law, international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The real problem, therefore, is not the absence of a framework for cooperation, but how that framework is implemented in practice without legal procedures becoming a mechanism for indefinitely postponing return.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"ar\" dir=\"rtl\">\u0648\u0632\u064a\u0631 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u062f\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u0645\u063a\u0631\u0628\u064a \u0639\u0628\u062f \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0637\u064a\u0641 \u0648\u0647\u0628\u064a: \u0646\u062a\u0645\u0633\u0643 \u0628\u0623\u0631\u0627\u0636\u064a\u0646\u0627 \u0648\u0646\u0631\u064a\u062f \u062d\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u0625\u0634\u0643\u0627\u0644 \u0645\u0639 \u0625\u0633\u0628\u0627\u0646\u064a\u0627 \u0628\u0627\u0644\u062d\u0648\u0627\u0631<br \/>\u0644\u0644\u0645\u0632\u064a\u062f \u0632\u0648\u0631\u0648\u0627 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tk5IBjauaM\">https:\/\/t.co\/tk5IBjauaM<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/IPgJ9ngPU8\">pic.twitter.com\/IPgJ9ngPU8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NOW \u0627\u0644\u0634\u0631\u0642 (@AsharqNOW) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AsharqNOW\/status\/2087223917417050177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 11, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is precisely where Wahbi\u2019s accusations against Madrid come in. The minister says Rabat has encountered cases in which Spanish authorities submit files concerning minors presented as Moroccan, only for Moroccan verification procedures to reveal that some of them do not hold Moroccan nationality. Morocco then reviews the files and identifies those who can actually be received. But according to Wahbi, this is where the process begins to stall, moving forward and then backward because of legal, judicial or administrative considerations. In the political reading he offers, Rabat therefore sees more than an accumulation of technical difficulties. It sees a gap between the political will publicly expressed to cooperate and the administrative and judicial machinery that ultimately controls implementation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The issue is particularly sensitive because Spain continues to carry the judicial legacy of earlier cases. In January 2024, Spain\u2019s Supreme Court confirmed that the return of Moroccan minors from Ceuta to Morocco in August 2021 had been unlawful because the required individual procedures and assessments of each minor\u2019s circumstances had not been respected. In September 2025, a court in C\u00e1diz also upheld the conviction of two former officials in a case involving the return of 55 minors during that same crisis. The caution now displayed by Spanish institutions cannot therefore simply be dismissed as a political pretext: it is also connected to a previous experience that ended in judicial accountability.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Wahbi nevertheless goes beyond the question of procedure. He places the family at the center of the issue and argues that protecting a minor should not be understood as keeping that child permanently away from his or her relatives. This is where one of the deepest differences between the two approaches becomes visible. Madrid primarily views the unaccompanied minor through the child\u2019s legal status on Spanish territory, while Rabat seeks to redefine the child through family and national belonging. From that perspective, returning a child to the family becomes itself part of protection rather than its opposite, provided that the child\u2019s identity is established and the return is organized with the necessary legal safeguards.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Moroccan argument nevertheless collides with a particularly sensitive Spanish reality. Following the July events, Ceuta faced exceptional pressure on its system for receiving and caring for minors, while Madrid announced additional resources and referred to the need to distribute part of the burden among other autonomous communities. Local authorities in Ceuta, for their part, emphasized that the situation had become unsustainable and called for migrants to be returned to Morocco, while the central government insisted that the treatment of minors had to remain governed by child-protection rules and individual assessments. The problem, therefore, is not simply that of a border under pressure. It directly concerns the capacity of a territory to absorb a situation whose human and legal dimensions go far beyond its local resources.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It is in this context that Wahbi\u2019s insistence on keeping the door open to Madrid must be understood, despite the firmness of his accusations. The minister describes Spain as a \u201cfriend\u201d and argues that when a friend faces a crisis, the other side should help it find a solution rather than add another crisis to its difficulties. This is not merely a diplomatic gesture. It allows Morocco to maintain pressure without turning the issue into an open bilateral confrontation. The message to Madrid is more precise: Rabat is not asking Spain to abandon its law, but to use the law as an instrument for reaching a solution rather than as a collection of procedures that prolong the waiting indefinitely.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Wahbi\u2019s reference to the possibility of resorting to international measures should also be read within this framework. It does not necessarily amount to an announcement of imminent escalation, but rather to the use of a pressure lever. Morocco knows that the issue of minors is particularly sensitive for Spain and Europe. It also knows that turning the matter into a major legal or diplomatic confrontation could weaken the cooperation that Rabat and Madrid need in the areas of migration, security and border management. Wahbi therefore leaves the door open to further meetings, but wants those discussions to take place from a different starting point: that of a state declaring itself ready to take back its citizens and assume responsibility for them, rather than a state being asked simply to recover a burden that has become difficult to manage.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The most sensitive element in the minister\u2019s argument, however, concerns minor girls and the risks to which some minors may be exposed in Ceuta. The issue then moves beyond the question of return and into the realm of protection itself. If the risks raised by the Moroccan side are established in specific cases, keeping a child away from the family for a prolonged period in a vulnerable environment becomes an ethical issue as much as an administrative one. Such allegations naturally require documentation and independent examination on a case-by-case basis, precisely because the seriousness of the issue makes it unacceptable for them to become merely rhetorical tools, regardless of which side invokes them. Yet their presence in the debate shows why Rabat wants the process accelerated: every additional day spent in a precarious situation creates another layer of risk and responsibility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The broader paradox revealed by the Ceuta crisis is that the problem does not appear to lie in the absence of an officially stated willingness to cooperate, but in the gap between political agreement and practical implementation. Morocco says it is ready to receive minors whose nationality has been established; Spain maintains that the law protects those children and prevents their automatic or collective return. Between these two positions, however, lies a space that should be occupied by permanent administrative cooperation: identification, contact with the family, verification of reception conditions, assessment of the child\u2019s best interests, and finally return when that return is legally and humanely appropriate. If this space remains without a clear operational mechanism, every new crisis will inevitably reproduce the same impasse.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is why Wahbi\u2019s real demand goes beyond the phrase \u201cGive us back our children,\u201d even though that expression perfectly captures the substance of his message. What Rabat is ultimately seeking is to move the minors\u2019 file from crisis management to a permanent procedure between the two countries. Identification should not start from zero after every new wave of crossings, and each case should not depend on a new administrative or judicial interpretation. The cooperation framework exists, and the political willingness to work together is regularly reaffirmed, but what remains missing is an effective mechanism capable of shortening the distance between a decision and the actual return of a child.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Behind Ceuta lies a broader question: who bears responsibility when a minor becomes the point where the borders and legal systems of two states meet? Morocco\u2019s answer is that sovereignty also means assuming responsibility for one\u2019s own children. Spain\u2019s answer is that its sovereignty is itself bound by rules protecting children once they are on Spanish territory. Both positions have a real legal and political foundation. The impasse begins when protection becomes an open-ended transitional status in which the child neither returns to the family nor reaches a stable long-term situation, remaining suspended between two different conceptions of responsibility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Seen from this perspective, Wahbi\u2019s firmness becomes easier to understand. He is not simply asking Madrid to return Moroccan minors; he is attempting to redefine what responsibility means in this particular case. His message is that Morocco is not turning its back on its children and that the state asking it to receive them is not asking it to assume something it refuses to bear. What Rabat demands is that this responsibility be translated into a concrete, organized and predictable procedure. Spain, for its part, needs to demonstrate that its commitment to protecting minors is not a means of keeping them indefinitely within its reception system, but a framework that, when return is legally and humanely appropriate, allows them to return safely and in an orderly manner.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Ceuta crisis has reopened this issue abruptly, but it may also provide an opportunity to deal with it differently. Instead of waiting for another crisis to reactivate contacts between officials, Rabat and Madrid could establish a permanent mechanism dedicated to Moroccan minors, extending from identification to family reunification, through child-protection structures, return and follow-up. Only then will the phrase \u201cGive us back our children\u201d cease to be merely a political slogan and become a genuine test of whether two states that describe themselves as partners and friends are capable of turning shared responsibility for a child into a shared solution, rather than leaving that child trapped in the uncertain space between law and politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest wave of mass crossings into Ceuta has left behind more than a temporary border crisis. It has brought back to the forefront one of the most sensitive issues in Moroccan-Spanish relations: the fate of unaccompanied Moroccan minors. While most of the adults who entered the city have returned to Morocco, the minors remain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,42,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa","category-europe-russia","category-the-maghreb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4648","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=4648"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4653,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4648\/revisions\/4653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}