Morocco is preparing a new framework for migration cooperation with its partners in the North, Fouad Yazough, director of International Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Spanish news agency EFE on Saturday, October 10. He described the initiative as an opportunity to rethink relations between the two sides of the Mediterranean as they face growing challenges linked to irregular migration.
“This will be the first time a country from the Global South proposes a cooperation model to countries in the Global North, whereas traditionally it was the latter that came up with the ideas and proposals shaping such arrangements,” Yazough said.
The aim is to move away from an approach in which northern countries set the main guidelines for migration cooperation while southern partners are largely expected to implement them. Morocco wants to help shape joint policies by putting forward proposals of its own.
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Yazough said recent migration crises had exposed serious weaknesses in the current system. “Recent migration crises show that the current cooperation model is not working or, at the very least, has shortcomings,” he said.
For the Moroccan diplomat, the recurrence of crises in recent years highlights the limits of a system struggling to respond to increasingly complex irregular migration challenges. Simply renewing existing mechanisms, he argued, would not be enough.
He called for new approaches and a fresh impetus to cooperation among countries of origin, transit and destination to improve the response to migration challenges.
An initiative announced by King Mohammed VI
The proposal follows the King’s address to Parliament at the opening of the new legislative year, in which he highlighted the limitations of the current migration cooperation model in light of recurring crises.
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With the planned strategy, Morocco aims to move beyond its traditional role as a partner in managing migration flows and become a driving force in shaping joint responses to irregular migration.
Yazough also framed the initiative as an effort to rebalance relations between northern and southern countries in the development of migration policies. Rather than having proposals designed in the North and then presented to partners in the South, Morocco wants to put forward a new cooperation framework itself. If implemented, the approach would change how the two sides develop their migration partnership.
