Aïcha Chenna handled self-mockery perfectly when she had to sum up.
“I am neither Sophia Loren nor Brigitte Bardot, just a fat lady who helps single mothers,” she confided to us during a meeting at her home in Casablanca in July 2006. The laughter and humor of the one who, on the other side of the Mediterranean, was baptized "Mother Teresa of Morocco", now belongs to (good) memories.
The Moroccan feminist icon, who had been dubbed by King Mohammed VI, died on Sunday September 25 following a long illness at the age of 81.
Founder, in 1985, of the association Solidarité Feminine, she tried to restore hope to these young mothers who gave birth to a baby out of wedlock.
Women on the street, repudiated by their families, beaten by their brothers.
The NGO offers them training, literacy courses, work in a one-of-a-kind structure housing a solidarity restaurant, a pastry shop, a hairdressing salon, a gym, a hammam... Among these "pariahs" on the road to reconstruction, mothers abused by a man who made them believe in nuptials or mistreated "little maids", these little girls who got pregnant after being raped by their employer.
Aïcha Chenna in Casablanca in 2006, with one of her association's protégés.
LP/Gaël Cornier
Their children are welcomed with open arms.
Her commitments earned her regular letters of insults and "moral condemnations", as she said herself, from, among others, radical imams.
They accused him of “wanting to westernize Moroccan society” and of “contributing to the existence of bastards”.
An internationally recognized action
Born in 1941, Aïcha, who lost her father at an early age, had undertaken nursing studies before working as a health and social education facilitator.
Her desire to break taboos, especially that of incest, was born in 1981. That year, she had an "electroshock" when she heard the cries of a baby taken from the breast of her single mother. to whom the social worker presented an act of abandonment to sign.
“They still resonate in my head.
Since that day, I swore to myself to do something, ”described this mother of four children to us sixteen years ago.
In 2017, the inexhaustible activist again called on the Moroccan Ministry of National Education to initiate sex education courses in schools in the kingdom.
His fight has been rewarded with numerous international prizes, in the United States but also in France.
In 1995, she received the Human Rights Prize from the French Republic and was decorated, in 2013, with the insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.
Even if she disturbed part of the Moroccan population, King Mohammed VI awarded her a medal of honor in 2000.
At the time, he made a donation, out of his own money, of one million dirhams (95,000 euros) in favor of his association.
The “mother courage” – her other nickname – had been invited several times to the royal palace.
"It's true, you could say that I have a love affair with him," she told us, hilarious, in 2006. Her outspokenness clashed.
“I am too direct to play politics…”