Mohammed VI

Mohammed VI (born August 21, 1963, Rabat, Morocco) is the king of Morocco since 1999. He has overseen a period of substantial economic growth in Morocco and was hailed in his early reign as a potential reformer, but his rule has been characterized by the monarchy’s firm grip on governance even while he has remained conspicuously absent from much of public life.

Early life and education

Mohammed ibn al-Hassan completed primary and secondary schooling at the Royal Palace College before entering the Mohammed V University in Rabat; there he received a bachelor’s degree in law in 1985 and, three years later, a master’s degree in public law. For a brief period in the late 1980s, the crown prince studied at the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels. He then entered the University of Nice in France, where he received a doctorate in law in 1993. His doctoral thesis dealt with relations between the Arab Maghreb Union and the European Economic Community (EEC), the institutional predecessor of the European Union (EU). He was educated in both Arabic and French, and literature and art were among his interests.

Over time the heir to the throne of Morocco took on increasing responsibilities in support of his father, King Hassan II. He became known particularly for advancing efforts to help the poor. In 1985 his father gave him the task of coordinating the country’s armed forces. As his father’s health declined in the 1990s, the crown prince represented him at a number of political meetings and ceremonial functions, both in Morocco and in other countries.

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Accession and reign

Hours after the death of his father on July 23, 1999, Mohammed took the throne as Mohammed VI. The formal enthronement ceremony took place on July 30. The new king thus joined two other young rulers of the Arab world—King Abdullah II of Jordan, who was a friend, and Sheikh Hamad ibn ʿIsa Al Khalifah of Bahrain—who had both assumed power in 1999 upon the deaths of their fathers.

As king, Mohammed VI preferred to minimize his time in the public eye. One notable exception was Throne Day, the annual commemoration of his enthronement in which members of Morocco’s ruling elite (makhzen) gather at the palace and Mohammed VI presents a speech outlining his agenda. In his inaugural speech he highlighted development, multiparty governance, economic liberalization, and individual and collective freedoms among his priorities. His role as Morocco’s Islamic leader and his openness toward some Islamist groups participating in the constitutional political process also raised expectations that his rule would bring about civic liberalization. The image he projected as a political reformer was soon deflated, however, when the government cracked down on dissidents in the aftermath of the 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca and the 2004 earthquake near Al-Hoceïma.

Morocco made strides elsewhere during his reign. School enrollment jumped significantly, particularly among young girls, and reforms in family law recognized additional rights for women in marriage and child custody. Business relations and infrastructure development also improved. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew fourfold by 2025, and the poverty rate fell from about 20 percent at the beginning of his reign to about 5 percent in 2013. International football (soccer) became a particularly visible measure of the country’s development under Mohammed VI: The men’s national team’s advance to the semifinals of the 2022 World Cup and the country’s selection to cohost the 2030 World Cup highlighted its investment capacity, while the Generation Z protests of 2025, fueled in part by World Cup spending despite deficiencies in public health and education, highlighted the unevenness of the development.

Other notable events of his reign showed a palace struggling to remain at the helm of public matters. In June 2011, amid the Arab Spring protests that had already toppled the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, Mohammed VI attempted to head off the growing protest movement in Morocco by proposing a new constitution that he claimed would curb his powers and strengthen representative democracy. The new document, which took effect that same year, included reforms that enshrined protections for Amazigh (Berber) language and identity, promoted the political participation of women, and guaranteed certain personal freedoms. It also expanded the powers of the prime minister and parliament but preserved the king’s role as the final authority in all areas of government and gave him exclusive control over religious affairs, security, and strategic policy. The king’s proactive engagement with the protest movement helped the monarchy sustain its legitimacy in the eyes of Moroccans. Meanwhile, the pro-democracy opposition that was brought to power in the 2011 elections, led by the Islamist Justice and Development Party (Parti de la Justice et du Développement; PJD), worked within a framework of constitutional monarchy. Nonetheless, the PJD was left constrained as the palace asserted control over strategic government offices, leading to a gradual decline in the PJD’s popularity over the next decade as it remained ineffective and unable to assert its policy agenda.

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After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Mohammed VI took swift, decisive, and unusually visible action to manage the crisis. The ability of the palace to act swiftly, while a beleaguered parliament tarried, enhanced the popularity of the palace. The following year a law reformed the electoral system in a manner intended to diversify representation in the parliament and dilute the dominance of any one party. When elections were held in 2021, the popularity of Mohammed VI’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and the fatigue of a decade of an ineffective PJD-led parliament resulted in a victory for the pro-palace party National Rally of Independents (Rassemblement National des Indépendants; RNI).

Nevertheless, Mohammed VI’s long public absences grew increasingly controversial about 2021. He had grown close to two German mixed martial artists of Moroccan descent, Abubakr “Abu” Azaitar and Ottman Azaitar, and they were increasingly accused of distracting the king and having undue influence in his court. Mohammed VI reportedly spent half of 2022 outside Morocco. When the Morocco earthquake of 2023 struck and killed more than 2,900 people, Mohammed VI’s slow response (he returned from France the following afternoon) was publicly noted.