Moroccan Foreign Minister, Nasser Bourita announced his intention to reopen Consulates in Tripoli and Benghazi, without specifying a date.
Bourita said, before the Moroccan Council of Advisors that Moroccans in Libya “suffer from many problems, and should conditions improve, we will reopen the two consulates.”
In October, the Moroccan website Hespress reported that “there is real suffering experienced by about a quarter of a million Moroccans residing in Libya, since the departure of the Moroccan Embassy.”
It added that the Embassy staff had left due to security threats in 2014, which left Moroccans without diplomatic representation in Libya. The website pointed out that the Moroccan authorities formed a crisis cell on the Tunisian-Libyan border, but left without warning.
In January, a Moroccan delegation visited Libya as a step towards reopening the Consulate in Libya. The delegation was headed by the President of the Maghreb Union Affairs. It included high-profile officials from Morocco’s Foreign Ministry.
Khalifa Al-Kayd from Libya’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the delegation. The process of acquiring visas for Libyan citizens to Morocco was discussed.
The two North-African countries had previously set up a committee to facilitate citizens’ mobility.
Chaired by the Libyan Foreign Ministry official, Murad Hmaima, the “Joint Libyan-Moroccan Consulate” held its first meeting in late 2021. The meeting tackled various issues related to facilitating the process of issuing visas for Libyan students and their families, as well as issuing residency permits for Libyan citizens in Morocco.