Poverty and Development

Political parties in Morocco are intensifying campaign efforts before legislative elections on September 23, which will ultimately decide Morocco’s next government.

Twenty-seven political parties are competing for 395 seats in the House of Representatives and the vote comes at a crucial time for the country.

Rising living costs, pressure on public services, and high youth unemployment – currently at 37.3 percent for Moroccans aged 15 to 24 – are all issues being hotly debated.

Party headquarters across Morocco and sites at packed city neighbourhoods and markets have been transformed into electioneering operation rooms. Campaign teams navigate crowded streets with loudspeakers, music, and leaflets to catch the attention of Morocco’s 15.8 million registered voters.

“We choose communication locations carefully; we start from a field map where we define the spaces where citizens meet naturally, then we divide the team according to tasks between direct communication and recording observations,” al-Wali al-Shtouki, campaign manager for the Justice and Development Party (PJD) in the Medina-Sidi Youssef Ben Ali district, told Al Jazeera.

“We also hold small meetings at the headquarters because they allow a calm and direct dialogue to understand what the citizen actually expects. What we hear in the field is what guides our daily work. After every tour or meeting, we collect observations and repeated questions and discuss them within the team, then we distinguish between local issues that need follow-up and those related to public policies and parliamentary work.”

While physical headquarters serve as hubs for election campaigns, a party’s success ultimately relies on its roots within a community, Jawad al-Shafdi, head of the Moroccan Observatory for Political Participation, said.

“In the Moroccan case, the strength of the candidate, their local extension, their network of relationships, and their electoral record also play essential roles,” al-Shafdi told Al Jazeera.

“We may find a party with limited organisational presence in a specific district achieving a significant result thanks to a strong candidate, and vice versa. Winning votes is achieved through a more complex system that combines party organisation, candidate strength, local extension, networks of elected officials, direct and digital communication, in addition to the party’s image and political offering.

“Therefore, the true criterion is not the number of people who enter the headquarters, but its ability to convert organisational movement into electoral mobilisation, mobilisation into votes, and votes into seats.”

Digital, direct engagement

The competition has forced political groups to adopt multi-channel strategies that balance street-level outreach with digital campaigns to reach a broader audience.

Fatima al-Tamni, a candidate for the Left Alliance in the Ain Sebaa – Hay Mohammadi district in Casablanca, highlighted the necessity of direct engagement with voters rather than superficial campaign displays.

She believes that party campaigns should serve as a space to listen to the concerns of the electorate and propose solutions, while building a strategic vision for transport, housing, pollution and other issues.

“We do not want to speak to the citizen from above, nor turn the campaign into a festival of pictures and slogans… We want to speak with them in clear language, and hear from them before we speak in their name,” she said. “[It] is not an end in itself, but the beginning of a new political relationship with citizens based on clarity, accountability, and fulfilling commitments.”

Youssef Ait Sidi Said, a political activist with the Progress and Socialism Party in the Chichaoua province, said campaigning remains an evolving process.

“For the party, this campaign is no longer just a specific period to introduce candidates and the electoral programme, but has become an opportunity for direct and continuous communication with the population and listening to their concerns and expectations,” Ait Sidi Said told Al Jazeera.

“Digital platforms allow reaching broad groups, especially youth, and grant them the possibility to interact, ask questions, and express their opinions. However, we do not consider that digitisation can replace direct communication. On the contrary, we see that each tool has its function.”

Ultimately, direct engagement with voters should remain the hallmark of party campaigns, he said.

“Field communication allows direct listening to the citizen, while digital platforms allow expanding the reach, interaction, and documenting activities,” Ait Sidi Said added.

Cairo, Egypt – Four days after he disappeared from the Egyptian team camp at the 2026 Under-20 World Wrestling Championships in Slovakia last month, 19-year-old wrestler Ziad Hajjaj Abu Gabal posted a message on Facebook.

“I don’t want my mother and father to be upset with me,” he wrote on August 29. “I did this so I could see myself as a man. I won’t go back to Egypt, my beloved country, until I bring it honour.

“Everything I earn in a month is 700 Egyptian pounds [$13.7], and I’m an international [athlete] … After all this pressure, there was no way I could go back.”

On August 27, another Egyptian wrestler, Mohamed al-Shami, 23, had escaped while his team transited through Rome on their way home from the Mediterranean Games in Taranto, Italy.

In his Facebook post on August 29, Al-Shami said he had come to feel like a financial burden on his family and that he wanted to start earning money for them.

“At a certain point I felt my father was exhausted, that life had become too hard for him,” he wrote. “I’m the eldest of my siblings, so someone had to make a sacrifice and take responsibility.”

While the authorities in Egypt may now try to take legal action against the two athletes, their posts drew a wave of sympathy from Egyptians on Facebook, with many saying they understood the pressures that pushed the athletes to escape from a country mired in poverty.

Indeed, Hajjaj and al-Shami are far from the first Egyptian wrestlers to flee while abroad, and the hardships they describe are widely shared across the sport in Egypt.

Debt and despair

A 27-year-old wrestler, who won several gold medals for Egypt and asked not to be named, told Al Jazeera that fellow athletes under 20 years old earn 700 Egyptian pounds ($13.7) to 800 ($15.7) Egyptian pounds a month.

Older international players reportedly receive between 5,000 pounds ($98.2) and 12,000 pounds ($235.7) a month, depending on their achievements.

“Wrestlers often go into debt to cover supplements and living costs while waiting for prize money that may or may not arrive,” he said.

Ahmed Baghdouda left for France in 2023 immediately after winning silver at the African Wrestling Championships, reportedly over low pay. Tarek Abdel Salam defected to Bulgaria in 2017 amid alleged medical neglect and later won European gold under Bulgaria’s flag. That year, Ibrahim Ghanem also chose to stay in France, subsequently winning a World Championship title for the country.

In October 2025, Mohamed Ibrahim el-Sayed – popular as Kishu and a six-time African wrestling champion, two-time U23 world champion, and bronze medallist in the 67kg category at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – announced he had taken “the first step” towards switching his sporting allegiance to represent the United States, posting training photos from a facility with the US flag behind him.

Asked by Al Jazeera through a messaging app why wrestlers keep fleeing Egypt, Kishu blamed the wrestling federation.

“It’s the only body that can provide a suitable environment, but the opposite keeps happening,” he said from the US. “The problem isn’t just about money – it goes much deeper than that. When I retire, what am I supposed to do? God forbid I get injured – what happens to me then?”

“I would take the same decision again and again and I advise Egypt’s international players to focus on their training and acquire their rights because it’s their lives that are being wasted.”

Al Jazeera reached out to the president and the vice president of the Egyptian Wrestling Federation (EWF), as well as the president of the Egyptian National Olympic Committee (ENOC), for their comments, but none of them responded.

However, the EWF’s team psychologist Hossam Mohamed said the disappearance of players abroad is not simply down to poor financial compensation or neglect, insisting the state provides good support to wrestlers – whether through financial bonuses, training camps abroad, or accommodation and meals. He said medal bonuses can reach 5 million Egyptian pounds ($98,135) for an Olympic gold.

“The wrestling federation, compared to major sports federations, has limited resources in light of the absence of broadcasting rights and the commercial and audience revenues enjoyed by football,” he noted.

“[But the] core problem for [athletes] isn’t only what they receive during their playing years, but what awaits them after retirement or injury.”

On Hajjaj and al-Shami, he said they competed in international championships, but “receiving bonuses is tied to achieving results – a player who doesn’t finish in a top position doesn’t receive a tournament bonus”, and neither was able to achieve podium finishes in recent competitions.

Gamal el-Badrawy, a former head of Egypt’s kickboxing federation, called on the Ministry of Youth and Sports to impose tighter oversight of national sporting federations and to review bonuses, allowances and health insurance.

“[Athletes] cannot be entirely absolved of responsibility, but the weak financial and administrative system is the main driver,” he told Al Jazeera.

Prosecutors investigate

Meanwhile, Egypt’s Ministry of Youth and Sports has referred Hajjaj and al-Shami to the public prosecutor, accusing them of breaking the rules governing national delegations.

The ENOC separately referred Brigadier General Ibrahim Adel – EWF secretary-general and head of the wrestling delegation at the tournament in Taranto – to its ethics committee for investigation and suspended him from his duties for allowing al-Shami to escape.

Adel refused to comment on the criticisms against the EWF, but told Al Jazeera he believed the moves against him were unfair, pointing to precautionary measures already in place before the trip: notarised undertakings signed by both the players’ guardians and the players themselves committing them to return to Egypt.

Meanwhile, fleeing athletes often leave behind distressed families.

Hajjaj’s father, Hajjaj Abu Gabal, told Al Jazeera over the phone that he was deeply worried for his son after he left the national team in Slovakia, noting that he had switched off his phone for a long time and did not respond to calls.

“I signed the notarised parental consent required for my underage son to travel,” he said, as 21 is the age of full legal adulthood in Egypt. “But no one from the wrestling federation had contacted me since the escape.”

Hajjaj, according to his father, said wrestling required expenses for food, drink, clothing and other needs, including costs related to the training period and participation in championships, and these expenses were a burden on him and the family.

“Whatever happens, he’s still my son,” the father said.

“I keep praying for him to be safe and secure, and may God compensate him for the difficult times he went through.”

This article was published in collaboration with Egab, a platform that empowers journalists from across the Global South to publish stories in international media outlets.

Gaza City — Whenever Mervat Radwan hears the community kitchen in her displacement camp will serve lunch that day, she breathes a sigh of relief.

She takes a cooking pot and walks to the community kitchen with her nephew, six-year-old Ubay.

The meal is rarely enough for the seven people in her household, so she has to supplement it with whatever else she can find. A can of tuna, beans or peas from an aid parcel can help make the meal stretch further.

“Sometimes they give us a cooked meal, but it isn’t enough for seven people, so I try to find something besides it,” she told Al Jazeera.

Community kitchens are a vital source of food for families with little or no income in Gaza, but their operations have fluctuated sharply in recent months.

The kitchen near Radwan’s displacement site was closed for almost two months before resuming services for just two days a week.

Daily production in Gaza fell from about 1.5 million meals via 165 kitchens in mid-March to 698,000 served by 102 kitchens by July, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

This substantial reduction in the number of community kitchens operating in the Gaza Strip and the meals they serve has been attributed to severe funding shortages and rising operational costs, with charities facing difficulties securing sufficient food or cooking supplies.

Tinned food and charity

Radwan, 45, became the guardian of her three nephews when an Israeli air attack in northern Gaza on October 18, 2024, killed her 38-year-old brother Mohammad and his wife, Anwar, 33, and their one-year-old son, Yosuf.

Their three other children survived, but Nayef, now 14 years old, had shrapnel lodged in his head; Habib, 11, suffered burns to his body, while Ubay, who is now aged four, had also sustained severe burns.

For the past nine months, they have lived in a tent in Deir el-Balah with Radwan, her 70-year-old father, and her 40-year-old sister, Sanaa.

None of the carers has a regular source of income, so they are reliant on aid and charity to make it through to the next day.

The children have been left psychologically scarred by the loss of their parents, and their frail state is compounded by the family’s inability to source the basic necessities for existence, including food.

“It’s not just about taking them in; there is a lot of responsibility … food, drink, expenses, everything they need,” Radwan said.

When food is scarce, the adults skip meals so the children have enough to eat.

“My elderly father won’t eat until he knows his grandchildren have had enough … Maybe this is the most we can do in these difficult circumstances,” Radwan said.

Meat is an unaffordable luxury, and even fresh vegetables are difficult to find due to their scarcity and high costs. Some organisations operating in Gaza occasionally distribute vegetables, but their supply is sporadic.

For little Habib, his recovery relies on the food he eats, with a doctor telling Radwan that he must drink water frequently and eat foods with high water content, such as cucumbers, regularly.

But 1kg of cucumbers costs about 15 shekels ($4.50) and tomatoes cost 10 to 12 shekels ($3-3.60), prices the family can barely afford.

“If Ubay wants cucumbers, and the children like cucumbers, I buy three cucumbers, that’s it,” she says.

The World Food Programme said in July that even when there was food in markets, many households in Gaza struggled to source fresh vegetables, fruit and protein due to high prices.

About 77 percent of households in Gaza reported difficulties in this area, because their limited incomes were not enough to secure these costly staples.

The family’s limited diet is now affecting the children’s health. Habib has been suffering from kidney stones for about a year, which doctors said is due to his diet that is high in salt and almost completely based on canned goods.

Changing Habib’s diet is difficult when fresh food items are expensive and aid supplies, which the family relies on, consist mostly of tins of food.

For families like the Radwans, food assistance from charities helps them live another day, but a lack of diversity in their diets is costing them their health.