Despite its improving performance, Morocco lags in the human rights index, says a new report

Morocco is one of the African countries that managed to accelerate their pace of improvement in the last five years in the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, published yearly by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Made public on October, the 2018 edition of the report ranks Morocco 15th among 54 African countries. The Kingdom has fell in the ranking according to its last year performance. Positioned 12th in Africa and 2nd in North Africa by the Index in 2017, Morocco is considered this year as one of the few nations in the continent that made great improvement.

Topped by Mauritius 1st, Seychelles 2nd, Cabo Verde 3rd, Namibia 4th and Botswana 5th, the Ibrahim Index ranks Morocco behind Tunisia 9th, and ahead of Algeria 27th, Egypt 29th, Mauritania 40th and Libya 52nd in the region.

Scoring 58.4 points out of 100, the Kingdom of Morocco has gained 7.3 points in the period between 2008 and 2017. According to the same source, Rabat has moved from 25th in Africa to 15th during the same period, having an increasing improvement.

Ranked 3nd by the Sustainable Economic Opportunity indicator

For the first index, Safety and Rule of Law, based on 4 other subindixes namely, Rule of Law, Accountability, Personal Safety and National Security, Morocco was ranked 17th, after Tunisia. It was positioned 35th in the Participation and Human Rights index divided into three sub-categories : Participation, Rights and Gender.

For the Sustainable Economic Opportunity indicator Morocco was positioned 3rd in the list based on four sub-indicators : Public Management, Business Environment, Infrastructure and Rural Sector. The Kingdom was 13th in the Human Development index divided into three categories : Welfare, Health and Education.

Morocco’s best score remains connected to the Sustainable Economic Opportunity, ranked 3rd in Africa with 68.3 points. On the other hand, Participation and Human Rights index remains one of the least performing categories for the country with 41.8 points.

According to the report, «many positive trends emerge from this year’s index». Fifteen countries have registered progress in Overall Governance compared to the last decade.

«Among those, Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco and Kenya display the most impressive progression, stepping up from 41st, 25th and 19th to 22nd, 15th and 11th ranks over the past decades», concluded the same source.