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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.
Customary Law
- EnglishWhere a traditional leader or cultural leader exists in a region the traditional or cultural leader shall-
a. be the titular head of the regional government;
b. be the titular head of the regional assembly and shall open, address and close the sessions of the regional assembly; and
c. enjoy the benefits, privileges and roles as provided for in article 246 of this Constitution and by Parliament and the regional assembly. (Fifth Schedule: Regional governments, Art. 8)
Customary Law
- English(1) A person shall be qualified to be appointed under section 77(1)(b) as a Member of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi if he or she-
(a) is a citizen of Botswana; and
(b) has attained the age of 21 years.
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(4) A Member of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi shall not, while he or she is such a Member, participate in party politics, but active participation in politics prior to being a Member of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi shall not bar any person from being such a Member. (Sec. 79)
Customary Law
- English(1) The State and all institutions and agencies of government at every level must take reasonable measures, including affirmative action programmes, to ensure that youths, that is to say people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five years—
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(e) are protected from harmful cultural practices, exploitation and all forms of abuse.
… (Sec. 20)
Customary Law
- English
The law establishes the rules concerning:
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- the procedure according to which the habits and customs will be recognized [constatées] and harmonized with the fundamental principles of the Constitution;
… (Art. 101) - French
La loi fixe les règles concernant :
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- la procédure selon laquelle les us et coutumes sont constatés et mis en harmonie avec les principes fondamentaux de la Constitution ;
… (Art. 101)
Customary Law
- English(1) Subject to the provisions of subsections (4), (5) and (7) of this section, no law shall make any provision that is discriminatory either of itself or in its effect.
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(3) In this section, the expression “discriminatory” means affording different treatment to different persons attributable wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions by sex, race, place of origin, political opinions, colour or creed 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) of this section shall not apply to any law so far as that law makes provision-
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(c) for the application, in the case of persons of any such description as is mentioned in subsection (3) of this section (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;
… (Sec. 16)
Customary Law
- English(1) Chiefs are the footstool of iNgwenyama and iNgwenyama rules through the Chiefs.
(2) The iNgwenyama may appoint any person to be chief over any area.
(3) The general rule is that every umphakatsi (Chief’s residence) is headed by a Chief who is appointed by iNgwenyama after the Chief has been selected by the lusendvo (family council) and shall vacate office in like manner.
(4) The position of a Chief as a local head of one or more areas is usually hereditary and is regulated by Swazi law and custom.
(5) Unless the situation otherwise requires, a chief shall assume office at the age of eighteen years or so soon thereafter as the period of mourning comes to an end.
(6) A Chief, as a symbol of unity and a father of the community, does not take part in partisan politics.
(7) A Chief may be appointed to any public office for which the Chief may be otherwise qualified.
(8) The powers and functions of chiefs are in accordance with Swazi law and custom or conferred by Parliament or iNgwenyama from time to time.
(9) In the exercise of the functions and duties of his office a Chief enforces a custom, tradition, practice or usage which is just and not discriminatory. (Sec. 233)
Customary Law
- 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:
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(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 -
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(ဃ) တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုး တစ်မျိုးနှင့် တစ်မျိုး သို့မဟုတ် တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးအချင်းချင်း ကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ အခြားဘာသာသာသနာကိုလည်းကောင်း ထိခိုက်နစ်နာမှု မရှိစေ ဘဲ မိမိချစ်ခင်မြတ်နိုးသည့် စကား၊ စာပေ၊ ယဉ်ကျေးမှု၊ ကိုးကွယ်သည့်ဘာသာ သာသနာနှင့် ဓလေ့ထုံးတမ်းများကို လွတ်လပ်စွာ ဆောင်ရွက်ပိုင်ခွင့်။ (ပုဒ်မ-၃၅၄)
Customary Law
- English(1) The institution of chieftaincy, together with its traditional councils as established by customary law and usage, is hereby guaranteed.
(2) Parliament shall have no power to enact any law which—
(a) confers on any person or authority the right to accord or withdraw recognition to or from a chief for any purpose whatsoever; or
(b) in any way detracts or derogates from the honour and dignity of the institution of chieftaincy.
(3) Nothing in or done under the authority of any law shall be held to be inconsistent with, or in contravention of, clause (1) or (2) of this article if the law makes provision for—
(a) the determination, in accordance with the appropriate customary law and usage, by a traditional council, a Regional House of Chiefs or the National House of Chiefs or a Chieftaincy Committee of any of them, of the validity of the nomination, election, selection, installation or deposition of a person as a chief;
(b) a traditional council or a Regional House of Chiefs or the National House of Chiefs to establish and operate a procedure for the registration of chiefs and the public notification in the Gazette or otherwise of the status of persons as chiefs in Ghana. (Art. 270)
Customary Law
- EnglishThe authorities of the indigenous communities, peoples, and nations shall perform jurisdictional duties, on the basis of their ancestral traditions and their own system of law, within their own territories, with a guarantee for the participation of, and decision-making by, women. The authorities shall apply their own standards and procedures for the settlement of internal disputes, as long as they are not contrary to the Constitution and human rights enshrined in international instruments.
The State shall guarantee that the decisions of indigenous jurisdiction are observed by public institutions and authorities. These decisions shall be subject to monitoring of their constitutionality. The law shall establish the mechanisms for coordination and cooperation between indigenous jurisdiction and regular jurisdiction. (Art. 171) - SpanishLas autoridades de las comunidades, pueblos y nacionalidades indígenas ejercerán funciones jurisdiccionales, con base en sus tradiciones ancestrales y su derecho propio, dentro de su ámbito territorial, con garantía de participación y decisión de las mujeres. Las autoridades aplicarán normas y procedimientos propios para la solución de sus conflictos internos, y que no sean contrarios a la Constitución y a los derechos humanos reconocidos en instrumentos internacionales.
El Estado garantizará que las decisiones de la jurisdicción indígena sean respetadas por las instituciones y autoridades públicas. Dichas decisiones estarán sujetas al control de constitucionalidad. La ley establecerá los mecanismos de coordinación y cooperación entre la jurisdicción indígena y la jurisdicción ordinaria. (Art. 171)
Customary Law
- English…
3. … Every ethnic group has the right to use its own spoken and written language to preserve its own identity and to promote its fine customs, practices, traditions and culture.
… (Art. 5) - Vietnamese…
3. … Các dân tộc có quyền dùng tiếng nói, chữ viết, giữ gìn bản sắc dân tộc, phát huy phong tục, tập quán, truyền thống và văn hoá tốt đẹp của mình.
… (Điều 5)