Constitution of the Kingdom of Morocco, 2011, Articles 24, 25 and 27 (Privacy of communications, freedom of expression and right to information)

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Morocco of 2011, adopted by referendum on 1 July 2011 and promulgated on 29 July 2011, contains the constitutional guarantees most relevant to digital rights in Morocco. Article 24 guarantees every person the right to the protection of their private life and provides that the secrecy of private communications, 'in whatever form', may not be infringed except as provided by law and by judicial order. Article 25 guarantees freedom of thought, opinion and expression in all their forms, and Article 27 establishes a right of access to information held by public administration and institutions. Read together, these provisions extend constitutional protection to private electronic communications and to online expression and access to information, and they form the constitutional backdrop to Morocco's statutory framework, the Press and Publishing Code (Law 88-13), the data-protection law (Law 09-08) and the cybercrime provisions (Law 07-03). The clauses are not, on their face, digital-specific: Article 24's reference to communications 'in whatever form' is a general communications-privacy guarantee rather than an express reference to electronic or internet communications, and there is no settled body of Moroccan constitutional case law applying these articles specifically to the digital environment. This entry is therefore recorded in line with the Library's established practice of capturing the constitutional privacy-and-expression layer for each jurisdiction, rather than on the basis of digital-specific constitutional text; that judgement is flagged for the reviewer. In practice, the protective force of Articles 24, 25 and 27 is contested: civil-society organisations document continued prosecution of online journalists and activists under the Penal Code and surveillance concerns (including the Pegasus revelations), notwithstanding the constitutional guarantees. Original language: Arabic (official) / French.

1. 1Article 24, protection of private life and secrecy of private communications 'in whatever form', infringeable only by law and judicial order
2. 2Article 25, freedom of thought, opinion and expression in all their forms
3. 3Article 27, right of access to information held by public administration and institutions
4. 4Constitutional backdrop to Law 88-13 (press), Law 09-08 (data protection) and Law 07-03 (cybercrime)
5. 5Not digital-specific on its face; included per the Library's cross-jurisdiction practice (flagged for reviewer)
6. 6Practical force contested amid documented Penal Code prosecutions of online speech and surveillance concerns