HREA’s first national educators training in Morocco took place in Casablanca from 25-28 January. The thirty enthusiastic participants included teachers, members of women”s and human rights groups, education officials, a representative of a parent organisation and university students. The training was organised by HREA’s Morocco office. Trainers included Mustapha Kak (project coordinator), Abderrahim Sabir (project director), Khalid El Abbioui (sociologist), Nezha Alaoui (legal specialist on the Moudawana), Laden Yurttagüler (textbook review specialist from Turkey) and Felisa Tibbitts.
The goal of the four-day training was to prepare for the review of 50 Moroccan school textbooks, applying gender-based criteria. The criteria that were distributed will be used to identify and document stereotypes of girls and women in the images and text in a variety of social science and humanities textbooks.
The textbook review process is being carried out in close cooperation with the Ministry of National Education, which is supporting the teachers’ involvement in the work, supplying textbooks, and will also have a member of their Human Rights Department participate as a reviewer. It is anticipated that the review process will result in the internalisation of gender-sensitive criteria in the internal textbook approval process of the Ministry. The textbook review process is part of a larger HREA effort in Morocco to promote the implementation of the new Family Code, or Moudawana.