Morocco’s New Stray Animal Law Raises Serious Concerns For The Animals It Claims To Protect
Morocco has taken another significant step in the way it intends to manage its stray animal population following the final parliamentary adoption of Law 19.25, legislation presented as a framework for protecting stray animals, organising their care and addressing the risks associated with free roaming populations. For a country already marked red on the Dog Desk Animal Action Global Stray Dog Crisis Map, however, the final adoption of this legislation does not put our concerns to rest. Instead, serious questions remain about what the law will mean in practice for the dogs and cats living on Morocco’s streets and for the people who have been trying to keep them alive.
Animal welfare groups have expressed serious concern following the law’s adoption, warning that despite being presented as a measure to improve the management and protection of stray animals, important weaknesses remain in the legislation. Among the concerns raised are restrictions affecting citizens who feed, care for or shelter community animals in public spaces, the absence of an explicit prohibition on the killing of stray dogs and cats and the failure to make humane population management programmes based on capture, sterilisation, vaccination and return mandatory across the country.
These concerns matter enormously in Morocco because they cannot be separated from what has already been happening to the country’s dogs. For years, animal welfare organisations and campaigners have raised concerns about the killing of free roaming dogs, while Morocco has faced growing international scrutiny over the treatment of its stray animal population. Dog Desk Animal Action placed Morocco in the red crisis category on our Global Stray Dog Crisis Map because the risks facing these animals were already serious. A new law carrying the language of animal protection therefore has to be judged not simply by its title or its stated intentions, but by whether it will genuinely make life safer for the animals on the streets.
One of the most troubling questions is what happens to the people who currently provide the informal safety net that many of these animals depend upon. Across countries with large free roaming populations, community carers often provide food, water, basic treatment and veterinary assistance to animals who otherwise have nobody. These people frequently know the dogs and cats in their neighbourhoods, recognise when an animal is sick or injured and help facilitate sterilisation and vaccination. If legislation makes it more difficult or potentially punishable for citizens to provide that care in public spaces, the consequences will ultimately be felt by the animals themselves.
Restricting the people who are already trying to help does nothing to address uncontrolled breeding, inadequate sterilisation coverage or irresponsible ownership. It simply removes one of the few sources of support available to animals who are already living without formal protection.
Animal welfare groups have also highlighted the absence of an explicit prohibition on the killing of stray dogs and cats, an omission that is particularly concerning given Morocco’s history and the allegations that have surrounded the treatment of free roaming dogs. Legislation intended to protect stray animals should leave no ambiguity about whether healthy animals can be killed as a means of controlling their numbers. Where that protection is not explicit, concerns about what may happen away from public view inevitably remain.
The failure to establish a mandatory nationwide programme based on sterilisation, vaccination and return is equally significant. Morocco cannot solve its stray animal crisis simply by removing the animals that are visible today. Unless reproduction is controlled on a sufficient scale and abandonment and irresponsible ownership are addressed, new animals will continue to appear. Removing one group of dogs without addressing the source of the population creates space for another, perpetuating the same cycle while individual animals continue to suffer.
Humane population management requires a long term national strategy built around prevention. Sterilisation must operate at sufficient scale, owned animals must be identified and registered, abandonment laws must be enforced and municipalities must have the resources and infrastructure necessary to manage animals humanely. Community carers and animal welfare organisations should be recognised as part of that solution rather than treated as part of the problem.
There are elements of Law 19.25 that have been presented positively, including provisions intended to prohibit cruelty and unjustified killing and to introduce greater responsibility for animal owners. Those ambitions should be welcomed where they result in genuine protection, but legislation can only be judged by what happens to animals after it is implemented. A law that promises protection on paper will mean very little if dogs continue to disappear from the streets, if humane population management remains inconsistent or optional, or if the people trying to feed and care for vulnerable animals find themselves prevented from doing so.
Morocco now has an opportunity to demonstrate what this legislation will mean in reality. That will require transparency about how stray animals are captured and managed, clear information about where they are taken and publicly available figures showing how many animals enter municipal facilities, how many are sterilised and vaccinated, how many are returned, transferred or reclaimed and how many die or are euthanised.
For the dogs themselves, these details are not administrative technicalities. They determine whether an animal picked up from a street will receive veterinary care and eventually return to its community, spend the rest of its life confined somewhere out of sight or simply disappear without anyone knowing what happened.
SPA Maroc has put forward an alternative framework containing 80 articles which, according to the organisation, would recognise animals as sentient beings, explicitly prohibit the killing of community dogs and cats, make humane population-management programmes mandatory and establish public animal protection centres in every municipality. Its intervention makes clear that the debate about Morocco’s stray animals is far from over.
For Dog Desk Animal Action, the final adoption of Law 19.25 does not provide sufficient reassurance to change our assessment of the situation in Morocco. The country remains red on our Global Stray Dog Crisis Map because the fundamental question has still not been answered by legislation alone: are the dogs living on Morocco’s streets genuinely going to be safer?
The answer will not be found in the title of a new law. It will be found in what happens next to the animals.
Official text of Draft Law No. 19.25 on the Protection and Care of Stray Animals and the Prevention of Associated Risks, as approved by the Moroccan House of Representatives on 29 June 2026.
