Morocco adopted a National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum in 2013 and outlined plans for a formal asylum law. More than a decade later, that law has still not been implemented.

“In practice, UNHCR registers asylum seekers and conducts refugee status determination in application of its mandate stated in the 1951 Refugee Convention and its Statute,” Muriel Juramie, UNHCR’s interim representative in Morocco, told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera contacted the Moroccan government for comment but did not get a response.

Recognised refugees can then obtain documentation and apply for residence permits.

Juramie said UNHCR has called for “the adoption of a comprehensive national asylum law in Morocco”, arguing it would bring “clarity, predictability, and consistency” to procedures, establish appeal mechanisms and formally codify the rights of recognised refugees.

Without it, organisations working with refugees say protection rests on an improvised system rather than a coherent legal framework.

“This is an unusual situation globally: a sovereign state effectively delegating a core protection function to an international agency, not by explicit legal design, but by default,” said Rachid Chakri of Fondation Orient-Occident.

“Refugees arriving in Morocco today face a system that is not designed to protect them over the medium or long term,” he said. “Many will spend years in legal precarity – registered but undocumented, present but unintegrated, visible to the state primarily as a migration management challenge rather than as rights-holders.”

For those who reach Morocco, there is no state-run refugee accommodation system. Aid groups fill part of the void, but only for the most vulnerable and only when resources allow. Some asylum seekers sleep rough or under bridges. Others rely on overstretched charities for temporary shelter, food or legal support.

On paper, recognised refugees have the right to work. In reality, however, access to work remains limited. Administrative barriers, recognition of qualifications and labour market conditions all restrict opportunities, while obtaining a residence permit can take time, the UNHCR said.

According to UNHCR, just 80 refugees – including 14 women – had accessed formal jobs, along with eight internships, out of more than 22,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers.

Without accommodation, money, or qualifications, refugees struggle to gain employment.

Before the war, Ali was in school and hoped to go to university. In Rabat, that future feels remote. He has completed a short course in elderly care and now works as an unpaid intern, but says his heart condition often makes even that difficult.

He could try to reach Europe via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta or Melilla in North Africa, but says his health makes that impossible, while crossing the Mediterranean is too dangerous, and too expensive.

Meanwhile, resettlement, which UNHCR grants in some instances based on vulnerability and available quotas, and is often spoken of by refugees as the only real way out, feels distant.

In 2025, Juramie said, “a hundred” had been submitted to resettlement countries, mainly in North America and Europe, which are growing increasingly resistant to allowing refugees in.

So Ali waits, for a decision that may never come, and with the constant fear of being picked up by police and sent south.