An initial voter enrollment period for Morocco’s September 2007 legislative elections ended May 4th. Magharebia News reports that despite widespread awareness campaigns educating citizens about the importance of participation, registration offices have not had the response they hoped for. A second registration period will be opened from May 8th-14th.

The UN security council unanimously approved Resolution 1754 on Monday 30 April, urging Morocco and the Polisario Front to hold direct and unconditional negotiations in order to resolve their 30-year conflict over Western Sahara. According to Magharebia News, the resolution also extends the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) by six months.

Morocco has delivered a proposal for autonomous control over the disputed Western Sahara region to the UN secretary-general, according to a report by Al-Jazeera. The North African country's proposal came a day after a rival movement working for the separation of Western Sahara from Morocco called for a referendum on independence.

According to a report by Magharebia news the Moroccan government has enacted a law explicitly forbidding money laundering and related financial crimes as a tool to combat both terrorism and organised crime.

More Moroccan women are living abroad than ever before. Officials in the country organized a seminar to discuss the challenges these women face and to discuss a new council to work actively in response to their unique needs.

Human activities are largely responsible for a loss of forest cover in Morocco. The government is taking steps to combat deforestation, but more remains to be done. In recent years ecologists and officials have raised the alarm that without sufficient awareness campaigns and government action, Morocco may lose its forests.

A royal birth followed immediately by an amnesty for more than a dozen death-row prisoners, among others, is being interpreted in Morocco as a signal that the country is on the verge of making history in the Arab world by being the first to abolish the death penalty.

The subject of women who have children out of wedlock remains taboo in Moroccan society. These single women are often forced to flee from their families and abandon their children. Organizations such INSAF and the Women's Solidarity Association of Casablanca are some of the few places these women can go for support.

For the first time in decades, the deserted Western Sahara village of Tifariti is reawakening to life. Located in the strip of land close to the Mauritanian desert border that is under the control of the Sahrawi pro-independence movement Polisario, Tifariti today is hosting "more than 800 delegates" participating in an international solidarity conference.

Swedish freelance photographer Lars Björk was expelled from Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara on the evening of 20 February, a day after his arrest in the territory’s capital, El Aaiún, RSF reports. The authorities made him take the first bus north to Agadir, where he boarded a flight back to Europe.

Morocco's "march towards light" as its literacy programme is called is brightening up as official figures go, but with far too many shady areas still. Two years after the launch of the programme intended to eradicate illiteracy by 2015 in line with the Millennium Development Goals, officials claim that illiteracy has diminished to 38 percent of the population of 30 million, from 80 percent in 1960 and 48 percent in 1999.

A court in Casablanca has handed down three-year suspended jail terms to two journalists for defaming Islam and breaching public morality in jokes published in a Moroccan magazine.

Moroccan police have violently rounded up more than 430 sub-Saharan migrants since late December and tried to force them over the Algerian border, rights campaigners and support associations have said.

The Moroccan authorities have called for the jailing of two journalists who published popular jokes about religion, sex and politics. The authorities removed the magazine, Nichane, which means "as it is", from sale last month after Casablanca's state prosecutor took legal action, saying the jokes were an attack on Islam.

The ABA seeks a Deputy Director of its Morocco Program, with primary responsibility for management of a gender- and human rights-focused curriculm development project. The Deputy will also assist with the management of a human rights legal clinic at a university near Rabat, and with selected aspects of the overall management of the Morocco program.

One of Morocco's first government departments to start the move to free software has chosen to switch its servers to Mandriva Linux and is looking at switching desktops to Linux in the near future in a move that could save them as much as 80% of their acquisition and support costs.

This conference will be held on July 2-5, 2006 Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco. It will focus on the question: how do our educational institutions need to change in order for learning to become genuinely transformational?

Politically motivated prosecutions of independent news weeklies are rolling back press freedom in Morocco, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released today (9 May). Today the Casablanca appeals court confirmed a fine and one-year suspended sentence against the director of al-Mash`al (“The Torch”) weekly for “insulting” a foreign head of state.

King Mohammed's pledge to grant autonomy to Western Sahara is a breakthrough and should ease concerns on all sides over the territory's fate, said a Sahrawi leader and chairman of the council working on the proposal. "It is the first time in the kingdom's history that a Moroccan king promises autonomy for the Sahrawis," Khali Henna Ould Errachid, chairman of the Royal Consultative Council for Sahara Affairs, told Reuters. "The autonomy satisfies the aspirations of all Sahrawis. It will end the conflict. I have no doubt on that," he added.

At a press conference in Casablanca on 6 April at the end of a visit to Morocco, Reporters Without Borders said it had noted “positive changes” but called on the authorities to remove the obstacles still constraining press freedom. Represented by its secretary-general, Robert Ménard, and the head of its Middle East and Northern Africa desk, Lynn Tehini, the organisation welcomed the fact that for the first time in 20 years it had been able to meet a member of the government, communication minister and government spokesman Nabil Benabdellah.