Constitutions should enshrine and guarantee women’s human rights without exception. In particular, constitutions should:

• Prohibit discrimination based on sex.

• Guarantee equal rights and legal protection to both women and men.

• Guarantee equal rights and responsibilities between women and men in marriage including consensual unions, civil marriages, and customary marriages.

• Guarantee a woman’s right to own, administer, and control property and land.

• Provide equal rights to women and men in inheritance and succession.

• Specify that conflicts between formal and customary laws are to be resolved in a manner that guarantees equality and non-discrimination.

• Exclude provisions that allow for exceptions that discriminate on the basis of gender, such as mandatory age of marriage set lower for females than for males, inheritance laws which favor male heirs, citizenship regulations which place a child’s citizenship only with the country of the child’s father and not the mother, and other customary or traditional practices which are not codified in law, such as women being forced to give up their land upon the death of a husband.