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....