Preamble
The sovereign People of Senegal,
PROFOUNDLY attached to their fundamental cultural values which constitutes the cement of the national unity;
CONVINCED of the will of all the citizens, men and women, to assume common destiny by solidarity, work and patriotic commitment;
CONSIDERING that national construction is founded on individual liberty and respect for the human person, sources of creativity;
CONSCIOUS of the necessity to affirm and to consolidate the foundations of the Nation and of the State;
ATTACHED to the ideal of African unity;
AFFIRM:
- their adhesion to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 and to the international instruments adopted by the Organization of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity, notably the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man of 10 December 1948, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination with Regard to Women of 18 December 1979, the Convention relative to the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989 and the African Charter of the Rights of Man and of Peoples of 27 June 1981;
their attachment to transparency in the conduct and management of public affairs as well as to the principle of good governance; their determination to strive [lutter] for peace and fraternity with all the peoples of the world;
PROCLAIM:
- the intangible principle of the integrity of the national territory and of the national unity within respect for the cultural specificities of all the components of the Nation;
the inalterability of the national sovereignty which is expressed through transparent and democratic procedures and consultations; the separation and the balance of powers conceded and exercised through democratic procedures; the respect for the fundamental freedoms and of the rights of the citizen as the basis of the Senegalese society; the respect for and the consolidation of a State of law in which the State and the citizens are subject to the same juridical norms under the control of an independent and impartial justice; the access of all the citizens, without discrimination, to the exercise of power at all its levels, to the equal access of all the citizens to the public services; the rejection and the elimination, under all their forms[,] of injustice, of inequalities and of discriminations; the will of Senegal to be a modern State which functions according to the loyal and equitable interaction [jeu] between a majority which governs and a democratic opposition, and a State which recognizes this opposition as a fundamental pillar of democracy and an indispensible cog [rouage] to the good functioning of the democratic mechanism;
Approve and adopt this Constitution of which the Preamble is an integral part.
