Use the filters on our BROWSE THE LEARNING CENTER page to explore our Corpus of Laws:
- Citizenship laws
- Civil laws
- Constitutions
- Family laws
- Violence against women prevention laws
- Penal codes
- Research reports and case studies
- WLP Partner advocacy materials
National laws that govern women’s roles and status in the family, whether secular or religious, often incite, encourage, and/or justify sex discrimination and gender-based violence. Knowing the specific language of laws is a powerful tool for women’s rights advocates seeking to reform the laws that harm women. For example, WLP’s international campaign, Equality: It Starts in the Family, is using the legal texts we have gathered as a starting place for our advocacy to end gender-based violence.
Our Corpus of Laws is a freely available collection of constitutions, civil family laws, gender-based violence related penal codes, and victim-protection legislation from our partner countries and elsewhere around the globe. The database currently contains over one hundred legal texts, available in Arabic, English, French, and other languages, and we are continuously adding to it.
Also included in the Corpus of Laws are case studies and reports from select countries that analyze the history of family law reform initiatives and their outcomes, and that propose strategies for legal changes in each country.
Under development: As a supplement to the legal instruments, WLP is collecting pamphlets, fact sheets, and other print materials from the advocacy campaigns of WLP partner organizations to include in the Corpus of Laws. These materials will provide examples of legal reform advocacy tools from different regions of the world, and from diverse geographic, political, religious, economic, and cultural contexts.
Please note: Should you wish to use, in part or in whole, content from our Learning Center, please consult our Terms of Use. In addition, if you use a resource, we kindly request that you complete our brief Learning Center Survey.