Nabila Mounib

In 1985, when she was preparing her doctoral thesis in France, she was active in the Youth of Democratic Students, then joined the Organization for Freedom of Information and Expression (OLIE) and the Organization of the Popular Democratic Action (OADP) which became, after merger with other formations of the left, the Unified Socialist Party (PSU).^[7][8] She was also a member of the national union of higher education (Syndicat national de l’enseignement supérieur  SNESup), and eventually became director for the Casablanca region.^[5]

Mounib was affiliated with the PSU, under its various names, as early as 2000, but only started actively engaging politically following the 2011 Arab Spring and ensuing protests in Morocco. On 16 January 2012, she was elected unopposed as General Secretary of the PSU and subsequently became the first Moroccan woman elected to head a political party.^[9][10] She was elected for a second term in 2018.^[11]

During the constitutional referendum in 2011, she called on her political movement and the Democratic Left Alliance for a boycott, saying that the constitution was not democratic given that it maintains most of the powers in the hands of the sovereign and does not assure a real separation of powers.

Questioned by the Moroccan magazine TelQuel in November 2012, she said that her short-term project is the unification of the left forces into a progressive democratic federalism.^[12] In August 2013, amid the outbreak of the Daniel Galván scandal, she was among the first to react by openly criticizing the royal pardon given to Galván, saying that "the decision to grant it [royal grace] to the pedophile Daniel Galván is unacceptable and should be revoked as soon as possible".^[3][13]

During a 2015 political crisis between Morocco and Sweden, which followed a Swedish bill to recognize the Sahrawi Republic, Nabila Mounib chaired a Moroccan delegation in Stockholm, composed of left-wing parties (PSU, PPS, USFP, etc.), between 4 and 7 November 2015, with a view to finding a solution to the crisis.^[14] In January 2016, Swedish public television SVT announced that the Swedish government had renounced its plan to recognize the SADR.^[15]

In 2021, two months before the general election, she pulled her party from the Fédération de la gauche démocratique (FGD), Morocco's main alliance of leftist parties.^[16] In the 2021 general election, she was the only PSU candidate elected to the House of Representatives.^[2] She was succeeded by Jamal El Asri as General Secretary of her party on 5 November 2023.^[17]

• Media related to Nabila Mounib at Wikimedia Commons
• Parti Socialiste Unifié - PSU | موقع آخر في psu maroc (Official website in French of The Unified Socialist Party)