Archives 1956: Dual Nationality or Shared Citizenship

It was Mr. Demnati—president of the Moroccan Mixed Chamber of Agadir, government adviser, and company director—who put forward the idea of dual nationality in order to facilitate a solution to the Moroccan problem, an idea that was taken up by the Moroccan Federation of the League of Human Rights.

Taking the elements of Mr. Demnati’s statement, Mr. Paul Decroux, director of studies at the Institute of Advanced Moroccan Studies, has just endeavored to demonstrate the “lack of foundation” of such a proposal and considers all the elements likely to support his thesis.

“As Mr. Demnati wrote, his suggestion of dual nationality,” says Mr. Decroux, “is intended above all to ensure respect for Moroccan sovereignty and, secondarily, to confer certain rights on French people who have become ‘new Moroccans.’

Its aim is to remove every alien element, to ‘Moroccanize’ everything in order to safeguard Moroccan sovereignty and guarantee national unity.”

Mr. Demnati’s idea is not a novelty in the legal sphere. Many individuals have two nationalities (when they are born to a father and a mother who are not from the same country), and even three nationalities when, though born to foreign parents, they opt for the country in which they were born.

This automatic acquisition of the mother’s nationality as well as the father’s nationality is not specific to current French law. It is found in the states of Latin America and in the USA since 1940, as well as in Soviet law and Ottoman law. There is absolutely no need for international agreements to establish this dual, or even triple, affiliation.

As things stand at present, Moroccans themselves, given the division of Morocco into three zones, fall under different jurisdictions depending on whether they are, although subjects of H.M. the Sultan, in the international zone, the Spanish zone, or the French zone.

If Morocco attains broad autonomy, will it be able to confer Moroccan nationality on all individuals born and even simply residing on its territory?

A law recognized throughout the Cherifian Empire would have to be enacted if one does not want the “new Moroccan,” within his new homeland, to be able to find himself without legal existence depending on whether he is in the north or the south of Morocco.

With this personal-status law enacted throughout the Cherifian Empire, and in force in the three zones, it will be necessary to find a competent jurisdiction to apply it.

For in the judicial domain there is no unity in Morocco. There are as many local jurisdictions as there are different personal statuses: sharia courts for Muslims, rabbinical courts for Israelites, customary courts for Berbers, and French courts for other Moroccans and in particular for Christians.

Many foreigners, moreover, fall under consular courts, and these foreigners will not agree to be naturalized as Moroccans.

Their legal situation would thus be very different from that of the French, who have become new Moroccans and are subject to Moroccan courts, whereas foreigners would remain subject to consular courts. Mr. Demnati did not fail to point out the peaceful coexistence within Muslim states of non-Muslim nationals in order to bolster his thesis (…).

In France, Moroccans are and remain Moroccans, but they enjoy on that basis—and not as “new Frenchmen”—public rights as well as private rights not recognized for ordinary-law foreigners.

Thus Moroccans may sit for the competitive examinations that give access to public-service posts in the French Republic, even though the law of 19 October 1946 reserved these posts for French citizens.

Moroccans may, on the same basis as French citizens, sit for the entrance examination to the ENA and potentially become ambassadors of France, or even civil controllers in Morocco—at least since the latter position became a function of the French state (…).

Moroccans, provided they hold a corresponding French diploma, may practice in France the professions of physician, surgeon, dental surgeon, or midwife, and this without ever distinguishing between Moroccans from the French zone or the Spanish zone.

It has therefore not been considered necessary to naturalize these Moroccans as French in order to grant them these rights, nor has it yet been considered that, in doing so, French sovereignty was being put in danger.
Le Petit Casablancais