The president of the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad, Driss El Yazami (Fez, 1952), knows well the price of being a human rights activist after experiencing imprisonment and exile in France during the reign of Hassan II. Currently, the institutional weight of his position has not distanced him from the realities of his country, as demonstrated by his advocacy for changes that would make it more democratic. Yazami visited Mallorca to present a study on school enrollment and dropout rates among Moroccan students.

Only 3% of Moroccan students who complete compulsory secondary education (ESO) in the Balearic Islands go on to university studies. This is one of the findings of the study. School enrollment and school dropout rates of the Moroccan population residing in the Balearic Islands The report, presented this Tuesday, was authored by anthropologist Alexandre Miquel, psychologist and sociologist José Luis Reina, and Mustafa Boulharrak, president of the Balearic Association of Moroccans. The Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, chaired by Driss El Yazami, also collaborated on the study. Despite a 95% increase in Moroccan primary school students (from 1,730 to 3,373) between 2010 and 2023, the increase in secondary school students was only 21% (from 1,357 to 1,640), primarily due to economic reasons, especially during the pandemic and subsequent years. The increase in students in intermediate-level vocational training has been 169% (from 94 enrolled in 2010 to 253 in 2023), while the increase rate in higher-level vocational training has been 653%, a percentage that is explained by the lower presence of Moroccan students at this educational stage: in 2010 there were 128.

Driss smiles and pauses for a moment in the Palma hair salon where he works while he considers whether to comment on the protests of thousands of young Moroccans in his country. They are demanding improvements in healthcare, education, job creation, and, ultimately, social justice. Decent living conditions. "Of course I understand them. How could I not?" he asks. They organized themselves through social media and digital platforms under the name GenZ212 (the generation to which they belong and the international telephone code for Morocco) to take to the streets of cities like Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir, and Tangier, among others. Driss, 33, understands them because he was one of those disillusioned, frustrated, and angry young people who demanded changes to the system.