Zhor El Horr

Zhor El Horr (also written Zhour Al Horr; in Arabic زهور الحر) was born in Casablanca in 1947. In 1966 she began her working life as a teacher of the Arabic language while studying law at the same time. She completed her law degree in 1975 and then passed the competitive examination for entry into the Moroccan judiciary.

In 1979 El Horr was appointed a judge at the Court of First Instance in El Jadida. Moroccan media, including Le360, LeBrief and Femmes du Maroc, describe her as the first woman to serve as a judge in Morocco, in a profession where women were then very rarely present.

She moved to Casablanca in 1983, where she held a series of posts in the first instance courts. She became vice-president of the Ain Chock Hay Hassani Court of First Instance in 1989. In 2000 she was appointed a counsellor at the Supreme Court, the body now known as the Court of Cassation. She went on to preside over the Ben M'sik Sidi Othmane court in 2002 and the Al Fida Derb Sultan court in 2003.

In 2004, the year Morocco's new family code came into force, she headed the family justice division in Casablanca. She was a member of the Royal Advisory Commission charged with revising the Moudawana and of the committee of experts that prepared the guide to the application of the new code. She took a firm position against child marriage, criticising judges who granted exemptions from the legal minimum age for marriage and calling for the removal of Articles 20 and 21 of the family code, which allow such exemptions. In 2006 she joined the Higher Council of the Judiciary. From 2006 she presided over a chamber at the Court of Cassation, where she served until her retirement at the end of 2010.

After leaving the bench she joined the Casablanca bar as a lawyer and remained active in human rights work. She taught at the Higher Institute of the Judiciary in Rabat, helping to train new generations of judges, served on the National Human Rights Council, and presided over the Moroccan Association for Family Support. In September 2019 she became president of the National Commission for the Care of Women Victims of Violence. In 2014 she co-wrote with Hassan Ibrahimi a book on the protection of women's rights in Moroccan case law. She was also known to the wider public as a mediator on Assolh Khir, a Radio Aswat programme devoted to resolving family disputes through dialogue.

El Horr kept her private life largely out of public view, and details of her family were not reported in coverage of her death. Her public life was devoted to the law, to teaching and to work with associations supporting families, women and children.

Zhor El Horr died on the morning of Friday, 16 October 2026, aged 79, after several months of illness. Her death was reported the same day by Médias24, Le360, LeBrief, Femmes du Maroc, La Vérité, Alayam24 and Le12, among others, several of which described her as nearly 80. The place of death and funeral arrangements were not widely reported.

Le360 reported that members of the judiciary paid tribute to her online as the first woman judge of the Kingdom. Femmes du Maroc wrote that with her death Morocco had lost a personality whose name remained associated with family justice and the defence of women's rights.

El Horr is remembered as a pioneer of the Moroccan judiciary whose career traced the gradual opening of the courts to women. Her work on the commission that revised the Moudawana and on the guide to its application tied her name to one of the most important social reforms in modern Morocco, and her later campaigning against child marriage and her leadership of the national commission for women victims of violence carried that work forward.

Her distinctions included the Order of Ouissam Alaouite at the rank of Knight in 2000 and Commander in 2003, a decoration from the King of Bahrain in 2006 at the second Arab Women Organization congress, and an Amnesty International Morocco award honouring her as a human rights defender and an independent judge. In April 2025 Mohammed V University in Rabat held a tribute to her.