On September 8th, 2023, an earthquake of the magnitude 6.8 devastated parts of Morocco (Rafferty, 2024). More than 2,900 people got killed and at least 5,500 people were injured. According to UNICEF estimates, up to 100,000 children were affected by the 2023 earthquake (UNICEF, 2023). In the aftermath of the disaster, what has been described as a “social media campaign” (Zouiten, 2023) started. This was encouraging Moroccan men to marry young girls that had been affected by the disaster in order to ‘protect’ and ‘save’ them (ibid) as a ‘good’, religious deed (El Bouchtaoui, 2023), as well as to escape high ‘bride prices’ in the cities (El Atti, 2023).
Following this campaign, Freedom in Disasters started to research whether this reported threat turned into reality. It has been found that while there is evidence of a social media campaign and the existence of a real threat, evidence of human trafficking taking place is extremely limited. Nevertheless, evidence is limited as many users have taken down their posts again (El Atti, 2023).
In addition to some left over social media posts that can be found online, a 20-year-old college student was arrested by the Moroccan police on September 14th under charges of promoting child abuse and preying on minor girls online following the earthquake (Al-Mansoori, 2023; El Atti, 2023). Additionally, a ‘green number’ was launched by the authorities following the earthquake for citizens to be able to report any suspicious actions regarding child endangerment or human trafficking (Zouiten, 2023).
Thus, while the extent of child trafficking that has de facto taken place is next to impossible to estimate, these findings of our study, despite not being able to confirm or deny whether children were trafficked in Morocco post-earthquake, do support the existence of at least a very real threat of an increase of such action. This underlines that pre-existing vulnerabilities and risks of child trafficking, including forced child marriage, are likely to be exacerbated in post-disaster contexts.
Freedom in Disasters will continue to research related topics to ascertain the prevalence of trafficking post disasters. For more information read the full article here.