Morocco has been a constitutional monarchy since March 28, 1956. Under the Constitution, approved by referendum in September 1992, the head of state is the sovereign, who appoints the Prime Minister and the heads of the main departments. The government is accountable to the sovereign and to the Parliament, which became bicameral on the basis of the changes made to the Constitution in 1996, which is entrusted with the legislative power. It consists of a House of Representatives, elected by direct suffrage for 5 years, and a House of Councilors, elected for 3/5 by local bodies and for the remaining 2/5 by professional organizations. The judicial system is based on French law and Islamic law (shari’ah). In 2004, a series of regulations were approved that recognize the personal and property rights to women that had been denied until then. Justice is administered, in its highest degree, by the Supreme Court, based in Rabat, divided into 5 Chambers; subsequently we find the Courts of Appeal; the sodad courts, competent in civil, commercial and personal matters; and the courts of first instance. The death penalty has been in place, but executions have not taken place since 1993. The armed forces are divided into three traditional weapons. Alongside these work the royal gendarmerie and auxiliary forces, a paramilitary force that works for internal security. Military service lasts 12 months. Education is free, in all its great, as long as it is given in the public school. According to andyeducation, primary school is compulsory, it starts at age of 7 and has a duration of 6 years. The secondary one also lasts 6 years and is divided into two microcycles. Despite the increase in the school population, the percentage of illiterate people in the country is still high, around 28.3% in 2015. The most important universities in the country are located in Rabat, Marrakech, Oujda, Casablanca and Tétouan.
TERRITORY
The region was subjected in the Paleozoic era to the Hercynian orogeny which gave rise to a series of mountainous alignments, subsequently worn down and peneplanated by meteoric erosion; later it was submerged several times by the sea, resulting in the formation of powerful layers of sediments, mainly sandstone, limestone and conglomerates, of both maritime and continental origin, superimposed on the base rocks dating back to the Cambrian and also to the Precambrian or Archaeozoic (schists mainly, which form the continental base of Africa). The Alpine-Himalayan orogeny began to manifest itself as early as the Mesozoic, however, reaching its maximum development in the Cenozoic era; this was the origin of the mighty mountain alignments that affect the Moroccan territory, arranging themselves parallel to each other, with the exception of the Rif (Er Rif), with a predominant NE-SW direction: from the Mediterranean to the Draa valley, in fact, the chains of the Rif, of the Middle Atlas, High Atlas and Anti Atlas. The Rif, formed mainly of Mesozoic rocks, extends in an arc along the Mediterranean coast with the convexity facing SW between the lower valley of the river (oued) Moulouya and the Strait of Gibraltar, beyond which it is geologically connected with the chains of the Betic Cordillera; it is a compact alignment, which has its highest peak in the Jebel Tidiquin (2456 m). AS of the accentuated tectonic depression represented by the so-called “Taza corridor”, which gradually descends until it merges from the left into the Moulouya valley, stands the Middle Atlas chain, bordered on the E by the upper valley of the Moulouya, while on the W it slopes gently towards the Atlantic coastal plain of the Rharb; it has a partly tabular and partly corrugated structure, and reaches 3340 m in the Adrar-Bou-Nasseur. Proceeding towards S, the High Atlas succeeds, joining the Middle Atlas through the mountainous region of Beni-Mellal; it is a continuous, mighty and elevated chain, with peaks over 4000 m (Djebel Toubkal, 4165 m, the highest elevation of Morocco and all of North Africa), which extends for over 700 km with sides deeply engraved by long valleys. The chain is narrower and higher in the western sector, W of Tizi n’Tichka (2270 m), one of its main passes, wider but with still very high peaks in the central one, while in the eastern sector it is much lower with a series of minor divergent fan-shaped alignments, gradually passing through the arid plateau that extends near the border with Algeria. To the SW the High Atlas joins through the volcanic massif of Jebel Siroua (3304 m) with the Anti Atlas, a large fold which caused the ancient Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks to rise, and which is lowered to the S towards the Draa valley and the first Saharan hamadas. The southern slopes of the Rif and the northern ones of the Middle and High Atlas slopes down giving rise to a vast plateau, which is followed by a series of coastal plains, fertile and highly populated, which actually constitute the summits of the country’s human geography. The largest is the northern one (the Rharb), between the Rif and the Middle Atlas and crossed by the Sebou; between the extreme southwestern offshoots of the High Atlas and the Anti Atlas opens the Souss plain, which, like the Rharb, is a large depression filled by recent floods. Other Atlantic plains are those formed by the Tennsift. On the Mediterranean lies a single vast plain, corresponding to the lower valley of the Moulouya. Morocco has a coastline of 1750 km; while the Atlantic coasts are generally united and low, the Mediterranean ones, except at the river mouths, are rather high and jagged due to the proximity to the sea of the Rif chain.