The revised family code enshrined the principle of gender equality and also became a rallying point for efforts to reform the Moroccan Nationality Code. Several additional factors helped this process. At the international level, Morocco appeared before the CEDAW Committee in 1997 and again in 2003, with the Committee issuing broad-ranging recommendations for law reform to comply with the Convention, including calling upon Morocco to bring its nationality laws into compliance with Article 9. At the national level, political developments helped usher more women into the legislature, creating a more favourable environment for reform of the nationality law. Between 1999 and 2001, most political parties adopted internal quotas for women to play a greater role in party affairs. They also reserved national-level party seats for women. In the 2002 legislative elections, a record 35 women were elected to the 325-seat Chamber of Representatives. Civil Society benefited from the emergence of several particularly effective good practices during the Moroccan Nationality Code reform campaign, which was led by the Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM). One was the creation of a country-wide network of listening centres at the grassroots level where women married to foreigners and unable to pass their citizenship to their children were able to explain the law’s impact on them and their families, including the resulting statelessness of many of their children. These testimonials were used in the campaign and affected families joined NGOs to pressure the Government for reform. The campaigners also collaborated with reform-minded journalists to convey their message to different audiences within the Government. Campaign leaders met with various stakeholders, including parliamentarians, to influence the drafting of a reform bill and lobbied cabinet members, such as the ministers of Justice and Women’s Affairs, to ensure their support for reform. This was accompanied by sustained coverage of their campaign via television, newspapers, magazines and radio that included explanations of the objectives of introducing gender equality into the Moroccan Nationality Code. Finally, the campaign organized a series of massive public rallies on the issue, including establishing a tent in front of the Parliament on Morocco’s national day to highlight the fight to end discrimination against women. Invoking again his role as Amír al-Mu’minín, the King gave a speech in July 2005 calling for the reform of Morocco’s Nationality Code so that it conformed to the principle of gender equality. The Government then submitted a reform bill to Parliament for debate. In March 2007, the bill to amend the Nationality Code passed unanimously, granting Moroccan women the same rights as those enjoyed by men to confer nationality on their children, and with retroactive effect. The new provision sets out that a child born to a Moroccan father or a Moroccan mother is Moroccan. Morocco moved quickly to lift its reservation to CEDAW Article 9(2) in 2008. Outreach efforts by Moroccan women’s organizations have helped ensure that the amended law has been successful in allowing Moroccan women to confer their nationality on their children, with documented improvements on the impact that citizenship has on the enjoyment of rights for the children concerned.7 7 4 For additional information, please see the report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and Tilburg University, Our Motherland, Our Country: Gender Discrimination and Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa (June 2013), available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/51c02a084.html CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS