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The Global Gender Equality Constitutional Database is a repository of gender equality related provisions in 194 constitutions from around the world. The Database was updated in partnership with the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) and with support from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the Government of Japan. Experience its wealth and depth of information by starting your search now.
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Customary Law
Colombia
- EnglishIn conformity with the Constitution and the laws, the indigenous territories will be governed by councils formed and regulated according to the usages and customs of their communities … (Art. 330)
- SpanishDe conformidad con la Constitución y las leyes, los territorios indígenas estarán gobernados por consejos conformados y reglamentados según los usos y costumbres de sus comunidades … (Art. 330)
Customary Law
Lesotho
- English1. Subject to the provisions of subsections (4) and (5) no law shall make any provision that is discriminatory either of itself or in its effect.
…
3. In this section, the expression “discriminatory” means affording different treatment to different persons attributable wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status whereby persons of one such description are subjected to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of another such description are not made subject or are accorded privileges or advantages which are not accorded to persons of another such description.
4. Subsection (1) shall not apply to any law to the extent that that law makes provision—
…
b. for the application, in the case of persons of any such description as is mentioned in subsection (3) (or of persons connected with such persons), of the law with respect to adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of property on death or other like matters which is the personal law of persons of that description;
c. for the application of the customary law of Lesotho with respect to any matter in the case of persons who, under that law, are subject to that law;
… (Sec. 18)
Customary Law
Papua New Guinea
- English(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other provision of any law, any act that is done under a valid law but in the particular case-
(a) is harsh or oppressive; or
(b) is not warranted by, or is disproportionate to, the requirements of the particular circumstances or of the particular case; or
(c) is otherwise not, in the particular circumstances, reasonably justifiable in a democratic society having a proper regard for the rights and dignity of mankind, is an unlawful act.
… (Sec. 41)
Customary Law
Myanmar
- EnglishEvery citizen shall be at liberty in the exercise of the following rights, if not contrary to the laws, enacted for Union security, prevalence of law and order, community peace and tranquility or public order and morality:
…
(d) to develop their language, literature, culture they cherish, religion they profess, and customs without prejudice to the relations between one national race and another or among national races and to other faiths. (Sec. 354) - Burmeseနိုင်ငံသားတိုင်းသည် နိုင်ငံတော်လုံးခြုံရေး၊ တရားဥပဒေစိုးမိုးရေး၊ ရပ်ရွာအေးချမ်းသာယာရေး သို့မဟုတ် ပြည်သူတို့၏ ကိုယ်ကျင့်တရားအကျိုးငှာ ပြဌာန်းထားသည့် ဥပဒေများနှင့် မဆန့်ကျင်လျှင် အောက်ပါအခွင့်အရေးများကို လွတ်လပ်စွာ သုံးစွဲဆောင်ရွက်ခွင့်ရှိသည် -
...
(ဃ) တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုး တစ်မျိုးနှင့် တစ်မျိုး သို့မဟုတ် တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးအချင်းချင်း ကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ အခြားဘာသာသာသနာကိုလည်းကောင်း ထိခိုက်နစ်နာမှု မရှိစေ ဘဲ မိမိချစ်ခင်မြတ်နိုးသည့် စကား၊ စာပေ၊ ယဉ်ကျေးမှု၊ ကိုးကွယ်သည့်ဘာသာ သာသနာနှင့် ဓလေ့ထုံးတမ်းများကို လွတ်လပ်စွာ ဆောင်ရွက်ပိုင်ခွင့်။ (ပုဒ်မ-၃၅၄)
Customary Law
Kiribati
- English1. There shall be a Banaba Island Council.
2. The powers and duties of the Banaba Island Council shall be prescribed by or under law. (Sec. 121)
Customary Law
Bahamas
- English1. Subject to the provision of paragraph (4), (5) and (9) of this Article no law shall make any provision which is discriminatory either of itself or in its effect.
…
3. In this Article, the expression “discriminatory” means affording different treatment to different person attributable wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, place of origin political opinions colour or creed whereby person of one such description are subjected to disabilities or restrictions to which person of another such description are not made subject or are accorded privileges or advantages which are not accorded to persons of another such description.
4. Paragraph (1) of this Article shall not apply to any law so far as that law makes provision-
…
c. with respect to adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of property on death or other matters of personal law;
… (Art. 26)
Customary Law
Sierra Leone
- English(1) The laws of Sierra Leone shall comprise—
a. this Constitution;
b. laws made by or under the authority of Parliament as established by this Constitution;
c. any orders, rules, regulations and other statutory instruments made by any person or authority pursuant to a power conferred in that behalf by this Constitution or any other law;
d. the existing law; and
e. the common law.
(2) The common law of Sierra Leone shall comprise the rules of law generally known as the common law, the rules of law generally known as the doctrines of equity, and the rules of customary law including those determined by the Superior Court of Judicature.
(3) For the purposes of this section the expression “customary law” means the rules of law which by custom are applicable to particular communities in Sierra Leone.
… (Sec. 170)
Customary Law
Liberia
- English...
b. The Legislature shall enact laws to govern the devolution of estates and establish rights of inheritance and descent for spouses of both statutory and customary marriages so as to give adequate protection to surviving spouses and children of such marriages. (Art. 23)
Customary Law
Vanuatu
- English1. The Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs has a general competence to discuss all matters relating relating to land, custom and tradition and may make recommendations for the preservation and promotion of ni-Vanuatu culture and languages.
2. The Council must be consulted on any question, particularly any question relating to land, tradition and custom, in connection with any bill before Parliament. (Art. 30) - French1) Le Conseil des Chefs Malvatumauri est compétent dans tous les domaines relatifs à la terre, coutume et à la tradition. Il peut faire des recommandations concernant la protection et la promotion de la culture et des langues vanuatuanes.
2) Le Conseil doit être consulté, sur toute question se rapportant à un projet de législation du Parlement, et en particulier celles relatives à la terre, tradition et à la coutume. (Art. 30)
Customary Law
Marshall Islands
- English(1) The Traditional Rights Court shall be a court of record; shall consist of panels of 3 or more judges selected so as to include a fair representation of all classes of land rights,9 including, where applicable, the Iroijiaplap, Iroijedrik, Alap and Dri Jerbal; and shall sit at such times and places and be chosen on such a geographical basis, as to ensure fair and knowledgeable exercise of the jurisdiction conferred by this Section.
(2) The size, membership and procedures of the Traditional Rights Court shall be consistent with paragraph (1) of this Section, and shall be determined by the High Court unless and until the Nitijela makes provision for those matters by Act.
(3) The jurisdiction of the Traditional Rights Court shall be limited to the determination of questions relating to titles or to land rights or to other legal interests depending wholly or partly on customary law and traditional practice in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
(4) The jurisdiction of the Traditional Rights Court may be invoked as of right upon application by a party to a pending judicial proceeding; but only if the court in which such proceeding is pending certifies that a substantial question has arisen within the jurisdiction of the Traditional Rights Court.
(5) When a question has been certified to the Traditional Rights Court for its determination under paragraph (4), its resolution of the question shall be given substantial weight in the certifying court’s disposition of the legal controversy before it; but shall not be deemed binding unless the certifying court concludes that justice so requires. (Art. VI, Sec. 4)