Morocco’s National Human Rights Council has released a new illustrated story collection aimed at equipping children and teenagers with the tools to navigate the digital world more safely, unveiled at its Rights Pavilion at the International Publishing and Book Fair in Rabat, known as SIEL 2026. The fair, which runs from May 1 to 10 and draws 61 countries and 891 exhibitors, provided a natural platform for the CNDH to reach its target audience directly through interactive readings and workshops.
The collection was developed through an intensive participatory process: dozens of workshops and consultations with children allowed the CNDH to translate young people’s own digital experiences into the scenarios, characters, and story arcs that populate the books. The illustrations were produced by artist Youssef Rahhali, with financial support from the European Union as part of a broader child rights partnership.
The result is a series that speaks in a register familiar to children rather than to adults — a deliberate choice aimed at maximizing reach and resonance.
The stories explore the dual nature of the digital space: its potential as a platform for learning, creativity, and social connection, alongside the risks it poses to young users through exploitation, misinformation, compulsive use, and privacy violation. Specific scenarios include a young girl who shares artwork online and is manipulated into giving away personal data, and a boy who forms an intense attachment to an AI chatbot before recognizing its limits. The narratives are designed to be simultaneously engaging and instructive, building digital literacy through storytelling rather than didactic instruction.
The CNDH’s engagement with children’s digital rights fits within a broader institutional program that CNDH President Amina Bouayach has consistently championed: moving children from the status of passive beneficiaries of rights to active participants in shaping the policies and frameworks that affect them. The SIEL activities are part of this approach — using cultural events and accessible formats to open conversations about digital rights that can then feed into legislative and policy processes, including the upcoming Child Code reform.
The CNDH also used its SIEL 2026 presence to launch an AI-powered interactive library — the Human Rights Morocco Library application — which allows users to conduct natural language queries across the Council’s full archive of reports and publications. A companion event tracking application was simultaneously launched. Both tools are available on the App Store and Google Play, and represent the Council’s effort to modernize access to institutional knowledge in a country where smartphone penetration and digital engagement are growing rapidly across all age groups.
