World Constitution Hub

Sudan — Constitutional Profile 📅 Current Governing Document Draft Constitutional Declaration — August 4, 2019 (amended 2025) 🏛️ Government Transitional — military-dominated since October 2021 coup 🌍 Capital Khartoum 📄 Total Constitutions Since 1956 Multiple — suspended, abolished or replaced after each coup ⚠️ Current Crisis Civil war between SAF and RSF since April 2023 👤 Al-Bashir's Rule 30 years — ended April 2019 after mass protests On June 3, 2019, soldiers and paramilitaries under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — known as Hemetti — opened fire on protesters who had been camped outside the military headquarters in Khartoum for weeks. At least 118 people were killed. Bodies were thrown into the Nile. Survivors described rape and deliberate executions. Eight weeks later, Hemetti sat down at a table in Khartoum and signed a constitutional declaration with the same civilian coalition whose members his forces had just massacred. It was the document meant t...

Algeria — Constitution Profile 📅 Current Constitution 1996 — amended 2002, 2008, 2016, and 2020 🏛️ Government Presidential Republic (military-backed in practice) 🌍 Capital Algiers 📄 Total Constitutions Since Independence Four — 1963, 1976, 1989, 1996 ✏️ Years Without Any Constitution 11 years — 1965 to 1976, under military decree 👑 Most Dramatic Moment 2019 — a wheelchair-bound, speechless president tried to run for a fifth term, and millions took to the streets In February 2019, Algeria's ruling party announced that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika would seek a fifth term in office. He had suffered a severe stroke in 2013. He had not spoken publicly since 2014. He communicated with his ministers by letter. He could not walk. The constitution he had personally amended in 2008 to remove term limits did not say anything about a president being physically capable of governing — and so his candidacy was, on paper, entirely legal. What followed was six weeks of mass pr...

New Zealand — Constitution Profile 📅 Constitution Act Constitution Act 1986 (principal formal statement) 🏛️ Government Type Unitary Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy 🌍 Capital Wellington 📄 Type Uncodified — spread across statutes, court decisions, and conventions 🌿 Founding Document Treaty of Waitangi, February 6, 1840 ⚡ Defining Constitutional Act Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 On February 4, 1985, Prime Minister David Lange did something no ally of the United States had done in the Cold War era: he refused entry to an American warship. The USS Buchanan, a guided missile destroyer, had requested permission to dock at a New Zealand port for a routine visit. Lange's government declined — because New Zealand could not confirm the ship was not carrying nuclear weapons, and the government had committed to keeping New Zealand nuclear-free. The United States responded by suspending its security treaty obligations to New Zeala...

Uzbekistan — Constitution Profile 📅 Original Constitution Adopted December 8, 1992 🏛️ Government Type Presidential Republic (Authoritarian in practice) 🌍 Capital Tashkent 📜 Constitution Rewritten 65% of text changed in April 2023 referendum 🩸 Defining Atrocity Andijan Massacre, May 13, 2005 — hundreds killed by government forces 🔄 Constitutional Trick 2023 referendum "zeroed" presidential terms — Mirziyoyev now eligible until 2040 When the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, began filing diplomatic cables to London in 2002 describing the systematic torture of prisoners — including accounts of people being boiled alive — the Uzbek government's official response was that one death had been an accident involving a kettle. Murray was eventually dismissed by the Foreign Office in 2004. The constitution of Uzbekistan, in force since December 8, 1992, guaranteed freedom from torture throughout all of this. It also guaranteed a two-ter...

Turkmenistan — Constitution Profile 📅 Original Constitution Adopted May 18, 1992 🏛️ Government Type (On Paper) Secular Democratic Presidential Republic 🌍 Capital Ashgabat 📜 Major Rewrites 1992, 2008, 2016, 2023 👑 Unique Constitutional Title "National Leader of the Turkmen People" — above the president, elected by no one ⚠️ Current Paradox The son is president; the father is constitutionally supreme In January 2023, the president of Turkmenistan signed a decree that placed someone above him in the constitutional order. That someone was his own father. Under a sweeping rewrite of the constitution adopted that month, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov — who had handed the presidency to his son Serdar just ten months earlier — was installed as head of a newly reconstituted People's Council, a body whose resolutions are now legally binding on all branches of government including the president. His new title: "National Leader of the Turkmen People....

Timor-Leste — Constitution Profile 📅 Active Since May 20, 2002 (ratified March 22, 2002) 🏛️ Government Type Semi-Presidential Republic 🌍 Capital Dili 🌐 Historic Distinction First new sovereign state of the 21st century 💰 Unique Constitutional Clause Article 139 mandates a sovereign wealth fund from oil revenues 📺 Turning Point The 1991 Santa Cruz Massacre — filmed and broadcast worldwide In November 1992, Indonesian security forces captured Xanana Gusmão in a tunnel beneath a family home in Lahane, on the outskirts of Dili. The man who had led the armed resistance against Indonesia's 17-year occupation of East Timor was tried in a Jakarta court in May 1993, convicted of rebellion and illegal possession of weapons, and sentenced to life imprisonment — commuted to 20 years by President Suharto just months later. From his cell in Cipinang maximum security prison, visited by Nelson Mandela and monitored by UN representatives, Gusmão continued to direct ...

Vietnam — Constitution Profile 📅 Current Constitution Active Since January 1, 2014 (adopted November 28, 2013) 🏛️ Government Type Unitary Marxist-Leninist One-Party Socialist Republic 🌍 Capital Hanoi 📜 Total Constitutions (North/Unified Vietnam) 5 (1946, 1959, 1980, 1992, 2013) ⚖️ Constitutional Paradox Article 4 enshrines the Communist Party as law — but no law governs the Party itself 🔥 Defining Campaign "Blazing Furnace" anti-corruption drive ousted 8 Politburo members since 2016 On September 2, 1945, standing before an enormous crowd in Hanoi's Ba Đình Square, Ho Chi Minh opened his Declaration of Independence with words borrowed directly from Thomas Jefferson: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." He quoted the American founding document deliberately — a signal to Washington that Vietnam deserved the same reco...