On this occasion, the first president of the Court of Cassation, president delegate of the CSPJ, Mohamed Abdennabaoui noted that the opening of the judicial year is an opportunity to highlight the efforts of the Kingdom's judiciary, make an objective assessment of the performance of justice and unveil the strategic goals and projects to come.
Quoted in a statement of the CSPJ, Abdennabaoui stressed that the courts have recorded some 4,611,236 cases for the year 2021, calling to further support the Moroccan judicial system by recruiting new judges for the coming years.
Thus, the number of judgments has increased by 44.4% compared to the judicial year 2020, noted the official, highlighting the considerable increase in cases recorded under the year 2021 (+38%).
In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kingdom's courts have made significant efforts in pursuing their constitutional missions, including deciding on 100.02% of the various cases in progress, or 3,858,046 out of 3,857,389 cases in 2021, said the same source.
Despite these encouraging figures, 753,315 cases are still pending in the various courtrooms in Morocco at the end of the judicial year, said Abdennabaoui, adding that each judge has on average processed some 1,800 cases per year.
He stressed, in the same context, that the congestion of the courts by the cases has exceeded the human capacity of the judiciary, since 89% of cases are pending before the courts of first degree (4,126,520 cases out of 4,611,361), highlighting the considerable lack of human resources compared to the large number of cases.
Also, according to the data presented by Abdennabaoui, the Court of Cassation has not been spared by this crisis, given that 2% of cases were treated before this court in 2021.
For his part, public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, president of the public prosecutor's Office, El Hassan Daki stressed that 45,304 cases were tried in 2021, an increase of 4,743 cases compared to the year 2020, at a rate of 214 cases per counselor per year, or 19 cases per counselor per month, specifying that this rate rises to 31 for the counselors in criminal chamber.
In this sense, he highlighted the considerable impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the number of new cases recorded for the year 2020 (31,448 cases, or 20,000 less compared to 2019).
On another aspect, Daki stressed the various constraints faced by the judges and executives of the Court of Cassation, in view of the constant increase in the number of cases recorded each year, expected to reach 100,000 during the judicial year 2022.