After Resolution 2797: How is Morocco building its version of autonomy?

It did not take long for King Mohammed VI's speech to follow immediately after the decision was issued, confirming that the time has come to move from theory to practice and to demonstrate the state's ability to deal quickly with this challenge.

Once this guidance was in place, the characteristics of the new phase began to take shape on the ground. Successive meetings were held between the king's advisers and party leaders, and others involving the ministers of foreign affairs and the interior with trade union leaders. 

With these meetings, Morocco entered an operational phase aimed at building an updated version of the initiative through broad national consultation. The goal is no longer to draft a document for diplomatic use, but to develop an initiative with internal consensus that will be presented to the United Nations.

As this dialogue expands, a legitimate question arises from the public: Will the state settle for parties and unions, or will the next stage see the participation of broader groups in society?

Initial reactions suggest that the door remains open to civil society and local actors, specifically in the southern provinces, because strengthening the initiative's internal legitimacy requires the participation of broader circles in the dialogue.

With this gradual expansion of participation, the importance of the constitutional framework regulating the decentralization process stands out, as the 2011 Constitution carried out profound reforms that laid the foundations for advanced regionalism, and of course included the southern provinces.

Today, these reforms do not appear to have been isolated from the context, but have formed a pre-terrain that facilitates the transition to the details of autonomy and allows the transformation of general ideas into applicable steps within an existing constitutional framework.

Some observers also believe that this path may require, at a later stage, additional constitutional amendments to more precisely adjust the mechanisms for implementing the initiative.

Looking at the experiences of autonomy in other countries, we see that regions generally do not have international independence and do not manage sovereign files such as defense or foreign affairs. This is what the Moroccan initiative, in its general framework, seeks to keep in mind when formulating its details later on. 

In return, the regions will be granted powers in the areas of the economy, development, services, and others. However, international experience confirms that texts alone are not enough; there must be a clear plan to implement the powers and avoid overlap.

Hence what Morocco seems to be moving towards today; the expanded meetings are not just a political consultation, but an attempt to formulate precise details: who is concerned and why? How to distribute financial and administrative powers? How are sectors and resources managed? And how do local mechanisms do this effectively? 

All this with the aim of producing a practical and coherent model that benefits from global experiences but is formulated in line with Morocco's specific characteristics and full sovereignty.

It should be noted at this important point that the Moroccan model is radically different from most autonomy models around the world. 

The Moroccan initiative is not presented as an administrative development within a stable state, but rather as a solution to a political conflict that lasted more than fifty years. It therefore combines a broad mandate for the local population with an emphasis on the unity of the state, in a formula that attempts to reconcile the needs for stability with the demands of the population.

In this sense, the initiative can be read as a gradual and realistic project, in the process of taking into account the Moroccan context and benefiting from comparative experiences without being a copy of it. As the internal debate evolves in the coming period and the circle of participants expands, it is premature to take a final position, and it is more important to observe how the details that will determine the future of the model are formulated when it is presented in its final form to the international community.

Dr. Amal Jabour, Jordanian writer and journalist