The youth movement in Morocco continues to defend its main demands for a decent health and education system, for dignity, freedom, social justice, the right to work and against corruption. Young people showed remarkable resistance for three consecutive days, 27-29 September 2025, in the face of the repression and arrests that affected hundreds of people in different cities. The state is preparing to take many of them to court.
A Stark contrast between two Moroccos
This movement has highlighted a stark contrast: on the one hand, the Morocco of “those at the top,” i.e. the ruling classes and their entourage, made up of the capitalist families known in our country. It is moving like a high-speed train to monopolize land, maritime, water and mineral wealth, and is getting rich thanks to colossal investments in so-called strategic projects, particularly those related to the preparation of the World Cup. And then the Morocco of those “at the bottom”: the popular classes who live in poverty, precariousness and unemployment, and who suffer from the deterioration of public services and rising prices. This is what young people expressed in the streets with their eloquent slogan: “We don’t want the World Cup, health first.”
The media blackout and the message of the ruling classes
These youth protests, and the brutal repression that accompanied them, were covered by numerous regional and international channels and platforms. But the official media and press completely ignored them. This shows the message of the ruling classes: the train of development of the “new Morocco”, hailed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, continues to move forward, and it will not be stopped by the demonstrations of a few young people who want to destabilize the country and disturb the festive atmosphere of our successes.
It is not surprising that our leaders and their instruments, media and repressive, behave in this way. They are in the pay of this minority of local and foreign capitalists and will only concede to the people the minimum necessary to avoid a social explosion, in exchange for a systematic repression of fundamental freedoms, first and foremost freedom of expression and demonstration.
Union silence: a new betrayal
What draws attention is the silence of the leaders of the major trade union organizations in Morocco, such as the Union marocaine du travail (UMT) and the Confédération démocratique du travail (CDT), who have not even issued a statement condemning the repression that has affected young (and sometimes very young) people. On the contrary, the latest news published on the Facebook page of the UMT shows that the secretary general and members of the national bureau received a delegation from the International Monetary Fund at the union’s headquarters in Casablanca on 23 September 2025. The Moroccan people know well that this financial institution, like its twin the World Bank, oversees policies that advocate the reduction of social spending in the fields of health and education for the benefit of the private sector, the abolition of the compensation fund, pressure on wages by maintaining a derisory minimum, destruction of pension systems, extension of flexibility and undeclared work, in addition to restricting the right to strike through the application of the law on strikes and the maintenance of article 288 of the criminal code (which condemns “obstruction of the freedom to work”)
Instead of refusing to receive this criminal institution against the Moroccan people, which has been widely denounced by social movements (including at a world summit against its annual meetings in Marrakech in October 2023), the leadership of this union held a meeting with it, thus giving it legitimacy for its choices, the same choices that young people in the streets of our country are opposing today. We note that the National Union of Higher Education, affiliated to the UMT, in its announcement of a three-day national warning strike, from 30 September to 2 October 2025, against the draft framework law 59-24 on the organisation of higher education, made no reference to the youth movement (of which education is one of the central demands), nor to the repression to which it is subjected.
These leaders continue to follow their usual approach of neutralizing the working class in any popular movement, as they did in the 20 February movement in the Rif, Jerada and elsewhere. We still see them today concretely dissociating themselves from the youth movement, as if the degradation of public health and education services did not concern workers.
On the other hand, the National Education Union - Democratic Orientation (FNE), as well as its youth union, supported the demands of the youth movement and denounced its repression. But his call to hold a central demonstration in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of National Education in Rabat on 5 October 2025, in parallel with the march of the Moroccan Front in Support of Palestine and Against Normalization, did not make the connection between the struggle for education and the youth movement, nor did it raise the need to unite the struggles between the unions and the youth protesting in the streets.
Unite the struggles to paralyze the means of production
The youth movement insists on the need to unify all the workers’ bases in the unions and coordinations, whether in education, health or in the other public sectors, as well as in the private sector, in order to engage effectively and concretely alongside the new generation in the struggle for education. health and dignity, and against repression and tyranny.
There is only one way to defeat the strategy of the ruling classes and that of the complicit trade union leaders, which aims to distance the working class from the struggles of the youth in the streets, while they defend the same demands as the workers: to link the youth movement to the struggles of the working class, and to unite efforts to carry out a general strike that will paralyze the tool of production and wrest victories from the ruling classes.
30 September 2025
Translated by International Viewpoint from Inprecor.