| PANAMA Republic of Panama Republica de Panama Joined United Nations: 13 November 1945 Human Rights as assured by their constitution Updated 07 November 2012 |
TITLE II
NATIONALITY AND EXTRANJERIA
Article 8. - The Panamanian nationality is acquired by the birth, the naturalization or constitutional disposition.
Article 9. - They are Panamanian by births:
1. The been born ones in the national territory.
2. The children of Panamanian father or mother by birth been born outside the territory of the Republic, if those establish their address in
the national territory.
3. The children of Panamanian father or mother by naturalization been born outside the national territory, if those establish their address in
the Republic of Panama and show their will to take refuge in the Panamanian nationality to more taking a year after their majority of age.
Article 10. - They can ask for the Panamanian nationality by naturalization:
1. The foreigners with 5 years consecutive of residence in the territory of the Republic if, after to have reached his majority of age, they
declare his will to become naturalized, resign specifically to their nationality of origin or to which they have and they verify that they have
the Spanish language and basic knowledge of geography, history and Panamanian political organization.
2. The foreigners with three years consecutive of residence in the territory of the Republic that have children born in this one of
Panamanian father or mother or spouse of Panamanian nationality, if they make the declaration and they present/display the verification
which he deals with the previous one aside.
3. The nationals by birth, of Spain or a Latin American State, if they fill such requisite that in their country of origin demands the
Panamanians to become naturalized.
Article 11. - They are Panamanian with no need of naturalization paper, the been born ones abroad adopted before turning seven years by
Panamanian nationals, if those establish their address in the Republic of Panama and show their will to take refuge in the Panamanian
nationality to more taking a year after their majority of age.
Article 12. - The Law will regulate the naturalization. The State will be able to deny its naturalization paper request for reasons of morality,
security, salubrity, physical or mental incapacity.
Article 13. - The nationality Panamanian of origin or acquired by the birth is not lost, but the resignation expresses or tacit of her it will
suspend the citizenship.
The Panamanian nationality derived or acquired by the naturalization will be lost by the same causes.
The express resignation of the nationality takes place when the person shows in writing to the executive her will to leave it; and the tacit
one, when another nationality is acquired or when it enters the service of a enemy State.
Article 14. - Immigration will be regulated by the Law in attention to the social, economic interests and of demographic of the country.
Article 15. - As much the nationals as the foreigners who are in the territory of the Republic, will be put under the Constitution and the
Laws.
Article 16. - The Panamanians by naturalization are not forced to take the arms against their state from origin.
TITLE III
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES
Chapter 1
Fundamental guarantees
Article 17. - The authorities of the Republic are instituted to protect in their life, honors and goods to the nationals where it wants find and
the foreigners who are under their jurisdiction; to assure the individual and social effectiveness of the rights and duties, and to fulfill and to
make fulfill the Constitution and the Law.
Article 18. - The individuals single are responsible before the authorities by infraction for the Constitution or the Law. The servants public
are it by those same causes and also by abuse of functions or in the exercise of these.
Article 19. - There will be personal fueros or privileges nor discrimination because of race, birth, social class, sex, no political religion or
ideas.
Article 20. - The Panamanians and the foreigners are equal before the Law; but this will be able, for work reasons, of salubrity, morality,
public security and national economy, to subordinate to special conditions or to deny the exercise of certain activities to the foreigners in
general. They will be able, also, the Law or the authorities, according to the circumstances, to take measures that exclusively affect to the
nationals of certain countries in case military or in accordance with which settles down in international treaties.
Article 21. - Nobody can be private of its freedom, but by virtue of order written of competent authority, sent in agreement with the legal
formalities and by reason previously defined in the Law. The executors of this order are forced to give copy of him, the interested one if it
will request it.
The delinquent surprised in fraganti can be learned by any person and must be given to the authority immediately.
Nobody can be stopped more than twenty-four hours without being put to orders of the competent authority. The servants public who
violate this rule have like sanction the loss of the use, without the judgment of the pains that stops the effect establishes the law.
There are purely no civil prison, halting or arrest by debts or obligations.
Article 22. - All lengthy person must be informed immediately and in form that is to him comprehensible, of the reasons of its halting and
its corresponding constitutional and legal rights.
The accused people to have committed a crime have right to that its innocence is presumed while its culpability in public judgment is not
proven that has assured him all the guarantees established for its defense. Who is stopped will have right from that moment, to the
attendance of a lawyer in the police and judicial diligences.
The Law will regulate this matter.
Article 23. - all individual stopped outside the cases and wing form that prescribes this Constitution and the Law, will be set free to
request hers or of another person, by means of the resource of habeas corpus that could be interposed immediately after the halting and
without consideration to the applicable pain. The resource will be transacted with preference to other pending cases by means of highly
summarized procedure, without the proceeding can be suspended because of hours or unskillful days.
Article 24. - The State will not be able to extradite to its nationals nor to the foreigners by political crimes.
Article 25. - Nobody is forced to declare in criminal, correctional subject or of police, against itself, its spouse or relatives within the
fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity.
Article 26. - The address or calls to account are inviolable. Nobody can enter them without the consent of its owner, but for written
mandate of competent authority and for specific aims, or to aid to victims of crimes or disasters.
The servants public of work, social security and health can practice, previous identification, domiciliary visits or of fulfillment of the
social laws and public health.
Article 27. - All person can journey freely by the national territory and to change of address or e calls to account without more limitations
than they impose the Laws or fiscal regulations of transit, salubrity and immigration.
Article 28. - The penitentiary system is based on security principles, rehabilitation and of social defense. The application of measures is
prohibited mental or moral that injure physical integrity, of the prisoners.
The qualification of the prisoners in offices will settle down that allow them to reincorporar themselves usefully to the society.
The minor prisoners will be put under a special regime of safekeeping, protection and education.
Article 29. - The private correspondence and other documents are inviolable and they cannot be occupied or be examined but by
disposition of competent authority, for specific aims and by means of legal formalities. In any case reserve will keep on the subjects other
people's to the object of the occupation or the examination.
Also, the deprived telephone communications are inviolable and they could not be intercepted. The registry of papers will always practice
in the presence of the interested one or of a person of its family, or in her defect, of two honorables neighbors of he himself place.
Article 30. - There is capital punishment no, of expatriation, nor of confiscation of goods.
Article 31. - Single the facts declared punishable by Law previous to their perpetration and exactly applicable to the imputed act will be
punished.
Article 32. - Nobody will be judged but by competent authority and according to the legal proceedings, nor more of once by the same
penal, political or disciplinary cause.
Article 33. - They can suffer without previous judgment, in the cases and within the precise terms of the Law:
1. The servants public who command and jurisdiction, that can impose fines or arrests to whatever the limitation or lacks to the respect in
the act in which they are performing the functions of his position or in the occasion of the performance of the same ones.
2. The commanders of the Public Force, who can impose punishments of arrest to his subalter us to contain an insubordination, a riot or
by disciplinary lack.
3. The airship or ship captains that being outside port have faculty to contain an insubordination or riot or to maintain the order on board,
and provisionally to stop any real or presumed delinquent.
Article 34. - In case of manifest infraction of a constitutional or legal rule, in damage of lagoon person, the superior mandate does not
exempt of responsibility the agent who executes it. The members of the Public Force are excepted when they are in good condition in
which case the responsibility falls solely on superior the hierarchic one that issues the order.
Article 35. - He is free the profession of all the religions, as well as the exercise of all the cults, without another limitation that the respect
to the Christian moral and the public order. It is recognized that the catholic religion is the one of most of the Panamanians.
Article 36. - The religious associations have legal standing and order and administer to their goods within the limits indicated by the Law,
just like the other legal people.
Article 37. - All person can emit her thought of word freely, in writing or by any other means, without subjection to previous censorship;
but they exist the responsibility legal when by some of these means it is attempted against the reputation or it honors of the people or
against the social security or the public order.
Article 38. - The inhabitants of the Republic must right to meet pacifically and without arms for allowed aims. The manifestations or
meetings outdoors are not subject to permission and it only requires itself to carry out them previous warning to the local administrative
authority, ahead of time of twenty-four hours.
The authority can take measures from police to prevent or to repress abuses in the exercise of this fact, when the form that is exerted
causes or can cause disturbance of the transit, alteration of the public order or violation of the rights of rights of third.
Article 39. - It is allowed to forms companies, associations and foundations that are not opposite to the moral or the order it bequeaths,
which can obtain their recognition like legal people. Recognition to the associations inspired by ideas or theories based on the tried
superiority of a race or an ethnic group will not be granted, or that justifies or promotes the racial discrimination.
The capacity, the recognition and the regime of the societies and other legal people will be determined by the Panamanian Law.
Article 40. - All person is free to exert any profession or subject office to the regulations that the Law with respect to social suitability,
morality, forecast and security, school registration, public health, obligatory syndication and quotations establishes.
Tax or contribution for the exercise of the liberal professions and the offices and the arts will not settle down.
Article 41. - All person must right to present/display respectful requests and complaints to the servants public by reasons for social or
particular interest, and the one to obtain quick resolution.
The public servant before whom appears a request, consults or complains will have to solve within the term of thirty days.
The Law will indicate the sanctions that correspond to the violation of this norm.
Article 42. - The Ministers of the religious cults, in addition to the inherent functions to their mission, will only be able to exert the
positions public who are related to the social attendance, the education or the scientific research.
Article 43. - The laws do not have retroactive effect, except those of public order or social interest when in them therefore it is expressed.
In criminal matter the favorable Law to the criminal always has preference and retroactivity, even though was ejecutoriada sentence.
Article 44. - The acquired private property in accordance with the Law by legal or natural people is guaranteed.
Article 45. - The private property implies obligation for its owner because of the social function that must fill.
By reasons for defined public utility or social interest in the Law, it can have expropriation by means of special judgment and
indemnification.
Article 46. - When of the application of a law sent by reasons for utility or from social interest the rights of individuals with the necessity
recognized by the same law are in conflict, the private interest will have to yield to the interest of the social public or.
Article 47. - In case military, of serious disturbance of the public order or of urgent social interest, that demands fast measures, the
Executive can decree to the expropriation or occupation of the private property.
When the return of the occupied object was feasible, the single occupation will be by the time that lasts the circumstances that will have
caused it.
The State is always responsible by all expropriation that thus carries out the executive and by the damages and damages caused by the
occupation, and will pay its value when it has stopped the determining reason for the expropriation or occupation.
Article 48. - Nobody is forced to pay contribution nor is imposed, that legally will not be established and whose cobranza will not become
in the form prescribed by the laws.
Article 49. - All author, artist or inventor enjoy the exclusive property of his work or invention during the time and in the form that the law
establishes.
Article 50. - All person against which she is sent or executed, by any public servant, an order to do or not to do, that violates the rights
and guarantees that are constitution consecrates, will have right to that the order is revoked to request hers or of any person.
The resource of shelter of constitutional guarantees to that this article talks about, will be transacted by means of summary procedure and
will be of competition of the judicial courts.
Article 51. - In outer case military or of internal disturbance that threatens La Paz and the public order, all the Republic will be able to be
declared in emergency or leaves from her and to suspend temporarily, of partial or total way, the effects of articles 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29,
37, 38 and 44 of the Constitution.
The emergency and the suspension of the effects of the mentioned constitutional norms will be declared by the Executive agency by
means of decree decided in Advice of Cabinet. The Legislative Organ, by own right or at the request of the President of the Republic, will
have to know the declaration of the referred state if he himself extends by more than ten days and to confirm or to revoke, total or
partially, the decisions made by the Council of Cabinet, related to the emergency.
When stopping the cause that the declaration of the emergency has motivated, the Legislative Organ, if he were reunited, or, if he will not
be it, the Council of Cabinet will raise the emergency.
Chapter 2
The Family
Article 52. - The State protects the marriage, the maternity and the family. The law will determine the relative thing to the civil state.
The State will protect the physical, mental and moral health of the minors and will guarantee the social right of these to the feeding, health,
education and security and forecast.
Also they will have right to this protection the old and ill destitute.
Article 53. - The marriage is the legal foundation of the family, rests in the equality of rights of the spouses and can be dissolved in
agreement with the Law.
Article 54. - The union in fact between people legally enabled to contract marriage, maintained during five years consecutive in conditions
of singularity and stability, will have all the desired effects of the civil marriage.
For this aim which will be enough that the interested parts jointly ask for to the civil registry the marriage inscription in fact, will be able
to be transacted by interval of the corridors. When that request has not taken place the marriage will be able to be verified, for the effects
of the claim of its rights, by one of the spouses or interested other, by means of the proceedings that the law determines. They will be
able, however, to be against to that the inscription is made or oppose it after made the Public Ministry in interest of the moral and the law,
or third that allege rights susceptible to be affected by the inscription, if the declaration will be opposite to the reality of the facts.
Article 55. - The mother country power is the set of duties and rights that have the parents in relation to the children.
The parents are forced to feed, to educate and to protect their children so that they obtain a good raising and an adapted physical and
spiritual development, and these to respect them and to attend them.
The law will regulate the exercise of the mother country power in agreement with the social interest and the benefit of the children.
Article 56. - The parents have towards their children had outside the marriage same the duties that respect to the been born ones in him.
All the children are equal before the Law and have he himself hereditary right in the paternal successions. The Law will recognize the
rights of the smaller or invalid children and the destitute parents in the made a will successions.
Article 57. - The law will regulate the investigation of the paternity. It is abolished all qualification on the nature of the connection.
Declaration will not be briefed some that establishes difference in the birth or on the civil state of the parents in acts of inscription of
those, nor in any report, game of baptism or certificate referring to the connection.
Faculty to the father of the son born prior to the use of this constitution is granted to protect it with the arranged thing in this article, by
means of the rectification of any act or filling up in which is established classification some with respect to this son. The consent of the
mother is not required for this. If the son is of legal age, this one must grant its consent.
In the acts of paternity simulation, it will be able to object this measurement that is affected by the act legally.
The Law will indicate the procedure.
Article 58. - The State will guard by the social and economic improvement of the family and will organize the familiar patrimony
determining the nature and quantity of the goods that must constitute it, on the base of which he is inalienable and unattachable.
Article 59. - The State will create an organism destined to protect the family with the purpose of:
1. To promote the responsible paternity and the maternity by means of the familiar education.
2. To institutionalize the education of the disabled in specialized centers to take care of those whose parents or tutors therefore ask for it.
3. To protect the old minors and, and to guard and to readapt socially to the left ones, abandoning, in moral danger or with misalignments
of conduct.
The law will organize and determine the operation of the special jurisdiction of minors which, among other functions, will know on the
investigation of the paternity, the desertion of family and the problems of youthful conduct.
Chapter 3
The Work
Article 60. - The work is a right and to have of the individual, and therefore it is an obligation of the State to elaborate political economic
directed to promote the total use and to assure to all worker the necessary conditions to a decent existence.
Article 61. - To all worker to the service of the State or public or deprived companies or particular individuals its wage or minimum pay is
guaranteed to him. The workers of the company that the Law determines will participate in the utilities of the same ones, in agreement
with the economic conditions of the country.
Article 62. - The Law will establish the way periodically to fit to the wage or minimum pay of the worker, with the purpose of covering
the normal necessities with its family, to improve its standard of life, according to the particular conditions of each region and each
economic activity; it will be able to determine also the method to fix minimum wages or pays by profession or office.
In the works by task or piece, it is obligatory that insured has left the minimum wage by piece or day.
The minimum of all wage or pay is unattachable, except for the nutritional obligations in the form that establishes the Law. The
instruments of work of the workers are also unattachable.
Article 63. - To equal work in identical conditions, it corresponds always equal wage or pay, nobodies that are the people who make it,
without distinction of sex, nationality, age, race, social class, political or religious ideas.
Article 64. - The right of syndication is recognized the employers, wage-earning and professional of all classes for the aims of its
economic and social activity.
The executive will have a improrrogable time of thirty days to admit or to reject the inscription of a union.
The Law will regulate concerning the recognition by the Executive of the unions, whose legal function and position of agent will be
determined by the inscription.
The Executive will not be able to dissolve a union but when aside permanently of his aims and thus competent court by means of firm
sentence is declared.
The directors of these associations will be integrated exclusively of Panamanians.
Article 65. - The strike right is recognized. The law will regulate its exercise and will be able to put under it special restrictions in the
services public who it determines.
Article 66. - The Maxima day of diurnal work is of eight hours and the workable week of up to forty and eight: the nocturnal Maxima day
will not be greater of seven hours and the extraordinary hours will be remunerated with surcharge.
The Maxima day could be reduced up to six hours daily for greater of fourteen years and minors of eighteen. One prohibits the work to
the minors of fourteen years and the nocturnal one to the sixteen minors, except for the exceptions that the Law establishes. One also
prohibits the use of minors up to fourteen years in quality of domestic crew members and the work of the minors and the women in
unhealthy occupations.
In addition to the weekly rest, all worker will have right to remunerated vacations.
The Law will be able to establish the weekly rest remunerated in agreement with the economic and social conditions of the country and
the benefit of the workers.
Article 67. - They are null, and therefore, they do not force the contractors, although they express in an agreement of work or another
pact anyone, the stipulations that imply resignation, diminution, adulteration or carelessness of some right recognized in favor of the
worker. The Law will regulate all the relative one to the work contract.
Article 68. - The maternity of the woman is protected worker. The one that it is in pregnant state it could not be separated of his public or
particular use by this cause. During a minimum of six weeks originating to the childbirth and the eight that follow to him, it will enjoy in
the same way of repaid unavoidable rest that its work and will conserve the use and all the rights corresponding to its contract. When
getting up itself the mother worker to her use could not be dismissed by the term of a year, safe in anticipated special cases in the Law,
which will regulate in addition, the special conditions of work of the woman in prenatal state.
Article 69. - The hiring of foreign workers is prohibited who can reduce the conditions of work or the norms of life of the national
worker. The Law will regulate the hiring of Managers, Administrative and Executive, technical and professional foreigners for services
public and deprived Directors, always assuring the rights the Panamanians and in agreement with the national interest.
Article 70. - No worker could be dismissed without right cause and the formalities that the Law establishes. This will indicate the right
causes for the special dismissal, its exceptions and the corresponding indemnification.
Article 71. - The State or the private company will distribute gratuitous professional education to the worker. The Law will regulate the
form to serve this.
Article 72. - The union qualification settles down. It will be exclusively distributed by the State and the Panamanian union organizations.
Article 73. - All the controversies that originate the relations between the capital and the work, are put under the jurisdiction of the work
that will be exerted in accordance with the arranged thing by the Law.
Article 74. - The Law will regulate the relations between the capital and the work, placing them on a base of social justice and fixing a
special state protection to benefit of the workers.
Article 75. - The rights and guarantees exerted in this Chapter will be considered like minimums in favor of the workers.
Chapter 4
Nacional culture
Article 76. - The State recognizes the right of all human being to participate in the culture and therefore it must foment the participation of
all the inhabitants of the Republic in the national culture.
Article 77. - The national culture this constituted by the artistic, philosophical and scientific manifestations produced by the man in
Panama through the times.
The State will promote, develop and guard east cultural patrimony.
Article 78. - The State will guard by the defense, diffusion and purity of the Spanish language.
Article 79. - The State will formulate the national scientific policy destined to promote the development of science and the technology.
Article 80. - The State recognizes the individuality and the universal value of the artistic work; it will support and stimulate to the national
artists disclosing his works through systems of cultural direction and will promote at national level the development of the art in all his
manifestations by means of academic institutions, of spreading and recreation.
Article 81. - The sites and archaeological objects Constitute the historical patrimony of the Nation, the documents, the monuments
historical and other personal or immovable property that is testimony of the past Panamanian. The State will decree the expropriation of
which they are into the hands of individuals. The Law will regulate concerning its safekeeping, founded on primacy historical of such and
will take the providences necessary to conciliate it with the feasibility of programs of commercial, tourist, industrial character and of
technological order.
Article 82. - The State will foment the development of the physical culture by means of sport institutions, of education and recreation that
will be regulated by the Law.
Article 83. - The State recognizes that the traditions folkloric constitute part to medular of the national culture and therefore it will
promote his study, conservation and spreading, establishing his primacy on manifestations or tendencies that adulterate it.
Article 84. - The native languages will be object of special study, conservation and spreading and the State will promote programs of
bilingual alphabetization in the indigenous communities.
Article 85. - The social mass media are instruments of information, education, recreation and cultural and scientific diffusion. When the
publicity or the diffusion of propaganda is used for, these do not have to be opposite to the health, the moral, the education, cultural
formation of the society and the national conscience. The Law will regulate its operation.
Article 86. - The State recognizes and respects the ethnic identity of the national indigenous communities, will make tendientes programs
to develop material, social and spiritual the values own of each one of its cultures and will create an institution for the study, conservation,
spreading of the same ones and their languages, as well as the promotion of the integral development of these human groups.
Chapter 5
Education
Article 87. - All have right to the education and the responsibility to be educated. The State organizes and directs the public service of the
national education and guarantees to the family parents the right to participate in the educative process of its children. The education is
based on science, uses its methods. It foments his growth and diffusion and it applies his results to assure the development the human
person and the family, like the affirmation and fortification of the Panamanian Nation like cultural and political community. The education
democratic and is founded on human principles of solidarity and social justice.
Article 88. - The education must take care of the harmonic and integral development of educating within the social coexistence, in the
aspects physical, intellectual and moral, aesthetic and civic and must try its qualification for the useful work in own interest and collective
benefit.
Article 89. - It is recognized that it is purpose of the Panamanian education of fomenting in the student a national conscience based on the
knowledge of history and the problems of the mother country.
Article 90. - The freedom of education is guaranteed and the right is recognized to create particular teaching institutions with subjection to
the Law. The State will be able to take part in particular the educational establishments so that they fulfill in them the national and social
aims of the culture and intellectual, moral, civic and physical the formation of the curriculum. The public education is the one that
distributes the official dependencies and the particular education is the distributed one by the private organizations. The education
establishments, are particular officials or, are open to all the students, without race distinction social position, political ideas, religion or
nature of the union of their ancestors or security personnel. The Law will regulate so much the public education as the particular
education.
Article 91. - The official education is gratuitous in all the levels pre-college students. The first level of education or general basic education
is obligatory. The gratuity implies the State to provide to educating the all necessary equipment for its learning while it completes his
general basic education. The gratuity of the education does not prevent the establishment of a right of matriculation paid in the
nonobligatory levels.
Article 92. - The Law will determine the state dependency that it will elaborate and approve the plans of studies, the educative programs
of education and levels, as well as the organization of a system of national of educative direction, all they in accordance with ace national
necessities.
Article 93. - The labor education settles down, like a modality not to regulate of education system, with programs of basic education and
special qualification.
Article 94. - The particular companies whose operations significantly alter the scholastic population in a determined area, will contribute to
take care of the educative necessities in accordance with the official norms and the urbanizing companies will have this same
responsibility as far as the sectors that they develop.
Article 95. - The academic and professional titles are only recognized sent by the authorized Be in favor or of this one in agreement with
the Law. The Official University of the State will control to the particular universities approved officially to guarantee the titles that they
send and will revalidate those of foreign universities in the cases that the Law establishes.
Article 96. - The education will be distributed in the official language, but by reasons for public interest the Law will be able to allow that
in some establishments this one is also distributed in foreign language. The education of the history of Panama and the civic education will
be dictated by Panamanians.
Article 97. - The Law will be able to create economic incentives in benefit of the public education and the particular education, as well as
for the national didactic work edition.
Article 98. - The State will establish systems that provide the suitable resources to grant scholarships, aid or other economic benefits to
the students who deserve it or need it. In equality of circumstances it will be preferred to economically more needed.
Article 99. - The Official University of the Republic is independent. Legal function and position of agent is recognized to him, own and
right patrimony to administer it. It has faculty to organize his studies and to designate and to separate his personnel in the form that
determines the Law. It will include in his activities the study of the national problems as well as the diffusion of the national culture. Equal
importance to the distributed university education in Regional Centers will occur that to the granted one in the capital.
Article 100. - To make the economic autonomy effective of the University, the State will equip it with the indispensable thing for its
installation, operation and future development, as well as of the patrimony which it deals with the previous Article and of means necessary
to increase it.
Article 101. - The freedom of chair without other limitations is recognized that those that, for reasons of public order, the University
Statute establishes.
Article 102. - The exceptional nature of the student, in all its manifestations, will be taken care of by means of special education, cradle in
the scientific research and educative direction.
Article 103. - The catholic religion in the state schools will be taught, but their learning and the attendance to the religious cults will not be
obligatory when they ask for his parents or tutors.
Article 104. - The State will develop to programs of education and promotion for indigenous groups since they have own cultural
patterns, in order to obtain its active participation in the citizen function.
Chapter 6
Health, Social Security and Social Attendance
Article 105. - It is essential function of the velar Be in favor of the health of the population of the Republic. The individual, like part of the
community, has right to the promotion, protection, conservation, restitution and rehabilitation of the health and the obligation to conserve
it, understood this one like the complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Article 106. - In health matter, the development of the following activities corresponds fundamentally to the State, integrating the
functions of prevention, treatment and rehabilitation:
1. To develop to a national policy of feeding and nutrition that an optimal nutritional state for all the population assures, when promoting
the availability, the consumption and the biological advantage of suitable foods.
2. To enable to the individual and the social groups, by means of educative actions, that spread to the knowledge of the duties and
individual and collective rights in the matter of personal and environmental health.
3. To protect the health of the mother, the boy and the adolescent, guaranteeing an integral attention during the gestation process,
lactation, growth and development in the childhood and adolescence.
4. To fight the transmissible diseases by means of the environmental cleaning, the development of the potable water availability and to
adopt measures of immunization, prophylaxis and treatment, provided collectively or individually, to all the population.
5. To create, in agreement with the necessities of each region, establishments in which service of integral health is lent and they provide
medicines to all the population. These services of health and medicines will be provided gratuitously to those who lack economic
resources.
6. To regulate and to watch the fulfillment of the conditions of health and the security that must reunite to the work places, establishing a
national medicine policy and industrial and labor hygiene.
Article 107. - The State will have to develop a non-political medicine national who promotes the production, availability, accessibility,
quality and control of medicines for all the population of the country.
Article 108. - It is to have of the State to establish a population policy that responds to the necessities of the social and economic
development of the country.
Article 109. - All individual has right to the security of its economic means of subsistence in case of incapacity to work or to obtain repaid
work. Of social security will be served or administered by independent organizations and will cover the cases with disease, maternity,
disability, subsidy of family, oldness, widowhood, orphanhood, unavoidable unemployment, professional industrial accidents, diseases and
the other contingencies that can be objects of forecast and social security. The Law will provide the implantation with such services as
the necessities demand it. The State will create establishments of social attendance and forecast. The economic and social rehabilitation of
the dependent or devoid sectors of resources and the chronic attention of the mentally incapable ones, patients, the indigents disabled and
of the groups are fundamental tasks of these that have not been incorporated to the social security system.
Article 110. - The State will be able to create complementary bottoms with the contribution and participation of the workers of the
companies public and deprived in order to improve the services of social security in the matter of retirements. The Law will regulate this
matter.
Article 111. - The governmental sectors of health, including their independent and semi independent institutions, are integrated organic and
functionally. The Law will regulate this matter.
Article 112. - The communities must have and the right to participate in the planning, execution and evaluation of the different programs
from health.
Article 113. - The State will establish a national policy of house destined to provide the enjoyment of this social right to all the population,
specially to the sectors of smaller entrance.
Chapter 7
Ecological Régime
Article 114. - It is to have fundamental of the State to guarantee that the alive population in a healthy and free atmosphere of
contamination, in where the air, the water and the foods satisfy the requirements with the adapted development of the human life.
Article 115. - The State and all the inhabitants of the national territory have must cause a social and economic development that prevents
the contamination with the atmosphere, maintains the balance ecological and avoids the destruction of the ecosystems.
Article 116. - The State will opportunely regulate, control and apply the measures necessary to guarantee that the use and the advantage of
the terrestrial, fluvial and marine fauna, as well as of the forests, earth and waters, are carried out rationally, so that its depredation is
avoided and it makes sure his preservation, renovation and permanence.
Article 117. - The Law will regulate the advantage of nonrenewable the natural resources, in order to avoid that from he himself social
damages are derived, economic and environmental.
Chapter 8
Agrarian Régime
Article 118. - The State will pay special attention to the integral development of the farming sector, will foment the optimal advantage of
the ground, will guard by its rational distribution and its suitable use and conservation in order to maintain it in productive conditions and
will guarantee the right of all agriculturist to a decent existence.
Article 119. - The State will not allow to the existence of areas incultas, unproductive and idle and will regulate the relations of work in the
land, having fomented a Maxima productivity and joust distribution of the benefits of this one.
Article 120. - The State will give to special attention to the communities farmers and natives with the purpose of promoting its economic,
social and political participation in the national life.
Article 121. - The correct agricultural Earth use is to have of the proprietor towards the community and will be regulated by the Law in
accordance with its ecological classification in order to avoid the sub use and diminution of its productive potential.
Article 122. - For the fulfillment of the aims of the agrarian policy, the State will develop the following activities:
1. To equip the farmers with territories of work necessary and to regulate the use of waters. The Law will be able to establish a special
regime of collective property for the communities farmers who ask for it.
2. To organize the credit attendance to satisfy the organized necessities of financing of the farming activity and, in to the special, of the
sector of limited resources and their groups and to give special attention small and medium producer.
3. To take measures to assure stable markets and equitable prices to products and to impel the establishment of organizations,
corporations and cooperatives of production, industrialization, distribution and consumption.
4. To establish mass media and transport to unite the communities farmers and natives with the storage centers distribution and
consumption.
5. To colonize new earth and to regulate the possession and the use of the same ones and of which they as resulting from integrate to the
economy the construction of new highways.
6. To stimulate the development of the agrarian sector by means of technical attendance and promotion of the organization, qualification,
protection, automation and other forms that the Law determines.
7. To make Earth studies in order to establish the agricological classification of the Panamanian ground. The policy established for this
Chapter will be applicable to the indigenous communities in agreement with the scientific methods of cultural change.
Article 123. - The State guarantees to the indigenous communities the reserve of necessary earth and the collective property of the same
ones for the profit of its economic and social well-being. The Law will regulate the procedures that must be followed to obtain this
purpose and the corresponding boundaries within which the deprived appropriation of earth is prohibited.
Article 124. - The agrarian jurisdiction settles down and the Law will determine the organization and distribution of its courts.
TITLE IV
POLITICAL RIGHTS
Chapter 1
Of the Citizenship
Article 125. - All the greater Panamanians of eighteen years Are citizen of the Republic, without sex distinction.
Article 126. - The political rights and the capacity to exert positions public with control and jurisdiction, are reserved to the Panamanian
citizens.
Article 127. - The exercise of the citizen rights is suspended: 1. By the cause expressed in article 13 of this Constitution. 2. By pain
according to the Law.
Article 128. - The Law will regulate the suspension and recovery of the citizenship.
Chapter 2
The Suffrage
Article 129. - The suffrage is a right and to have of all the citizens. The vote is free, equal, universal, secret and direct.
Article 130. - The authorities are forced to guarantee the freedom and honesty of the suffrage. They are prohibited:
1. The direct or indirect official support to candidates to positions of popular election, even though will be guarded the average employees
to such aim.
2. The activities of propaganda and partisan affiliation in the public offices.
3. The exacción of quotas or contributions to the employees public for political aims, to pretext of which they are even voluntary.
4. Any act that it prevents or it makes difficult to a citizen to personally obtain, to keep or to present/display his identity card. The Law
will tipificará the electoral crimes and will indicate the sanctions respective.
Article 131. - The conditions of eligibility to be candidates in charge of popular election, on the part of officials government, will be
defined in the Law.
Article 132. - The political parties express political pluralism, concur to the formation and manifestation of the popular will and are
fundamental instruments for the political participation, without damage of the free postulation in the form anticipated in the Law. The Law
will regulate the recognition and subsistence of the political parties, without, in no case, it can establish that the number of the necessary
votes for their subsistence is superior to the five percent of the emitted valid votes in the elections for President, Legislators or
Representatives of Groups of judges, according to the favorable voting to the party.
Article 133. - The formation of parties is not allowed that have by base sex, the race, the religion or which they tend to destroy the
democratic form of Government.
Article 134. - The political parties will have right, in equality of conditions, to the use of social mass media that the Central Government
administers and to successfully obtain and to receive information of all the public authorities on any matter of his competition, which they
do not refer the reserved diplomatic relations.
Article 135. - The State will be able to control and to contribute to the expenses which the natural people and the political parties in the
electoral processes incur. The Law will determine and regulate these controls and contributions, assuring the equality erogaciones of all
party or candidate.
Chapter 3
The Electoral Court
Article 136. - With the intention of guaranteeing the freedom, honesty and effectiveness of the popular suffrage, an independent Court will
be established. Legal function and position of agent is recognized to him, own and right patrimony to administer it. It will interpret and
apply the Electoral Law privatively, it will direct, watch and control the inscription of vital facts, deaths, naturalization and other facts and
legal transactions related to the civil state of the people; the expedition of the personal identity card and the phases of the electoral process.
The Court will have jurisdiction in all the Republic and he will be made up of three Magistrates who such reunite requisite that they
demand to be Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice, which will be designated for a period of ten years, thus: one by the Legislative
Organ, another one by the Executive agency and third by Supreme Court of Justice, between people who do not comprise of the
nominating authority. For each main one two substitutes will name in the same form, who could not be civil employees of the Electoral
Court. The Magistrates of the Electoral Court are responsible before the Supreme Court for Justice by the lack or crimes committed in the
exercise of their functions and are to them applicable articles 202, 205, 207, 208, 209 and 213 with the sanctions that the law determines.
Article 137. - The Electoral Court will have in addition to which to him the Law confers, the following attributions that will exert
provativamente, except the briefed ones in numerals 5 and 7:
1. To carry out the inscriptions of births, marriages, deaths, naturalizations and other facts and legal transactions related to the civil state
of the people and to make the preceding annotations in the respective inscriptions.
2. To issue the personal identity card.
3. To regulate the Electoral Law, to interpret it and to apply it and to know the controversies that originate their application.
4. To sanction the lack and crimes against the freedom and purity of the suffrage and in accordance with the Law.
5. To raise the Electoral roll.
6. To organize, to direct and to control the registry of voters and to solve the controversies, complaints and denunciations that on the
matter will happen.
7. To transact the files of the requests of migration and naturalization.
8. To name the members of the electoral corporations, in which the representation of the legally constituted political parties will be due to
guarantee. The Law will regulate this matter. The decisions of the Electoral Court are recurribles before he himself and once fulfilled the
proceedings of Law, will be solely definitive, irrevocable and obligatory. The referring thing to the unconstitutionality resource is excepted.
Article 138. - The Electoral Office of the public prosecutor is an agency of independent and helping instruction of the Electoral Court. The
Electoral Public prosecutor will be named by the subject Executive agency to the approval of the Legislative Organ, by a period of ten
years; he will have to fill such requisite that stops to be Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice and will have equal restrictions. Their
functions are:
1. To safeguard the political rights of the citizens.
2. To watch the official conduct of the officials electoral government with regard to the rights and political duties.
3. To persecute the electoral crimes and contraventions.
4. To exert the other functions that the Law indicates.
Article 139. - The public authorities are forced to accept and carry out an order and emanated decisions of the civil employees of the
electoral jurisdiction, lending to these obedience, cooperation and aid that they require for the performance of his attributions. The
omission or negligence in the fulfillment of such obligation will be sanctioned in agreement with which it arranges the Law.
NATIONALITY AND EXTRANJERIA
Article 8. - The Panamanian nationality is acquired by the birth, the naturalization or constitutional disposition.
Article 9. - They are Panamanian by births:
1. The been born ones in the national territory.
2. The children of Panamanian father or mother by birth been born outside the territory of the Republic, if those establish their address in
the national territory.
3. The children of Panamanian father or mother by naturalization been born outside the national territory, if those establish their address in
the Republic of Panama and show their will to take refuge in the Panamanian nationality to more taking a year after their majority of age.
Article 10. - They can ask for the Panamanian nationality by naturalization:
1. The foreigners with 5 years consecutive of residence in the territory of the Republic if, after to have reached his majority of age, they
declare his will to become naturalized, resign specifically to their nationality of origin or to which they have and they verify that they have
the Spanish language and basic knowledge of geography, history and Panamanian political organization.
2. The foreigners with three years consecutive of residence in the territory of the Republic that have children born in this one of
Panamanian father or mother or spouse of Panamanian nationality, if they make the declaration and they present/display the verification
which he deals with the previous one aside.
3. The nationals by birth, of Spain or a Latin American State, if they fill such requisite that in their country of origin demands the
Panamanians to become naturalized.
Article 11. - They are Panamanian with no need of naturalization paper, the been born ones abroad adopted before turning seven years by
Panamanian nationals, if those establish their address in the Republic of Panama and show their will to take refuge in the Panamanian
nationality to more taking a year after their majority of age.
Article 12. - The Law will regulate the naturalization. The State will be able to deny its naturalization paper request for reasons of morality,
security, salubrity, physical or mental incapacity.
Article 13. - The nationality Panamanian of origin or acquired by the birth is not lost, but the resignation expresses or tacit of her it will
suspend the citizenship.
The Panamanian nationality derived or acquired by the naturalization will be lost by the same causes.
The express resignation of the nationality takes place when the person shows in writing to the executive her will to leave it; and the tacit
one, when another nationality is acquired or when it enters the service of a enemy State.
Article 14. - Immigration will be regulated by the Law in attention to the social, economic interests and of demographic of the country.
Article 15. - As much the nationals as the foreigners who are in the territory of the Republic, will be put under the Constitution and the
Laws.
Article 16. - The Panamanians by naturalization are not forced to take the arms against their state from origin.
TITLE III
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES
Chapter 1
Fundamental guarantees
Article 17. - The authorities of the Republic are instituted to protect in their life, honors and goods to the nationals where it wants find and
the foreigners who are under their jurisdiction; to assure the individual and social effectiveness of the rights and duties, and to fulfill and to
make fulfill the Constitution and the Law.
Article 18. - The individuals single are responsible before the authorities by infraction for the Constitution or the Law. The servants public
are it by those same causes and also by abuse of functions or in the exercise of these.
Article 19. - There will be personal fueros or privileges nor discrimination because of race, birth, social class, sex, no political religion or
ideas.
Article 20. - The Panamanians and the foreigners are equal before the Law; but this will be able, for work reasons, of salubrity, morality,
public security and national economy, to subordinate to special conditions or to deny the exercise of certain activities to the foreigners in
general. They will be able, also, the Law or the authorities, according to the circumstances, to take measures that exclusively affect to the
nationals of certain countries in case military or in accordance with which settles down in international treaties.
Article 21. - Nobody can be private of its freedom, but by virtue of order written of competent authority, sent in agreement with the legal
formalities and by reason previously defined in the Law. The executors of this order are forced to give copy of him, the interested one if it
will request it.
The delinquent surprised in fraganti can be learned by any person and must be given to the authority immediately.
Nobody can be stopped more than twenty-four hours without being put to orders of the competent authority. The servants public who
violate this rule have like sanction the loss of the use, without the judgment of the pains that stops the effect establishes the law.
There are purely no civil prison, halting or arrest by debts or obligations.
Article 22. - All lengthy person must be informed immediately and in form that is to him comprehensible, of the reasons of its halting and
its corresponding constitutional and legal rights.
The accused people to have committed a crime have right to that its innocence is presumed while its culpability in public judgment is not
proven that has assured him all the guarantees established for its defense. Who is stopped will have right from that moment, to the
attendance of a lawyer in the police and judicial diligences.
The Law will regulate this matter.
Article 23. - all individual stopped outside the cases and wing form that prescribes this Constitution and the Law, will be set free to
request hers or of another person, by means of the resource of habeas corpus that could be interposed immediately after the halting and
without consideration to the applicable pain. The resource will be transacted with preference to other pending cases by means of highly
summarized procedure, without the proceeding can be suspended because of hours or unskillful days.
Article 24. - The State will not be able to extradite to its nationals nor to the foreigners by political crimes.
Article 25. - Nobody is forced to declare in criminal, correctional subject or of police, against itself, its spouse or relatives within the
fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity.
Article 26. - The address or calls to account are inviolable. Nobody can enter them without the consent of its owner, but for written
mandate of competent authority and for specific aims, or to aid to victims of crimes or disasters.
The servants public of work, social security and health can practice, previous identification, domiciliary visits or of fulfillment of the
social laws and public health.
Article 27. - All person can journey freely by the national territory and to change of address or e calls to account without more limitations
than they impose the Laws or fiscal regulations of transit, salubrity and immigration.
Article 28. - The penitentiary system is based on security principles, rehabilitation and of social defense. The application of measures is
prohibited mental or moral that injure physical integrity, of the prisoners.
The qualification of the prisoners in offices will settle down that allow them to reincorporar themselves usefully to the society.
The minor prisoners will be put under a special regime of safekeeping, protection and education.
Article 29. - The private correspondence and other documents are inviolable and they cannot be occupied or be examined but by
disposition of competent authority, for specific aims and by means of legal formalities. In any case reserve will keep on the subjects other
people's to the object of the occupation or the examination.
Also, the deprived telephone communications are inviolable and they could not be intercepted. The registry of papers will always practice
in the presence of the interested one or of a person of its family, or in her defect, of two honorables neighbors of he himself place.
Article 30. - There is capital punishment no, of expatriation, nor of confiscation of goods.
Article 31. - Single the facts declared punishable by Law previous to their perpetration and exactly applicable to the imputed act will be
punished.
Article 32. - Nobody will be judged but by competent authority and according to the legal proceedings, nor more of once by the same
penal, political or disciplinary cause.
Article 33. - They can suffer without previous judgment, in the cases and within the precise terms of the Law:
1. The servants public who command and jurisdiction, that can impose fines or arrests to whatever the limitation or lacks to the respect in
the act in which they are performing the functions of his position or in the occasion of the performance of the same ones.
2. The commanders of the Public Force, who can impose punishments of arrest to his subalter us to contain an insubordination, a riot or
by disciplinary lack.
3. The airship or ship captains that being outside port have faculty to contain an insubordination or riot or to maintain the order on board,
and provisionally to stop any real or presumed delinquent.
Article 34. - In case of manifest infraction of a constitutional or legal rule, in damage of lagoon person, the superior mandate does not
exempt of responsibility the agent who executes it. The members of the Public Force are excepted when they are in good condition in
which case the responsibility falls solely on superior the hierarchic one that issues the order.
Article 35. - He is free the profession of all the religions, as well as the exercise of all the cults, without another limitation that the respect
to the Christian moral and the public order. It is recognized that the catholic religion is the one of most of the Panamanians.
Article 36. - The religious associations have legal standing and order and administer to their goods within the limits indicated by the Law,
just like the other legal people.
Article 37. - All person can emit her thought of word freely, in writing or by any other means, without subjection to previous censorship;
but they exist the responsibility legal when by some of these means it is attempted against the reputation or it honors of the people or
against the social security or the public order.
Article 38. - The inhabitants of the Republic must right to meet pacifically and without arms for allowed aims. The manifestations or
meetings outdoors are not subject to permission and it only requires itself to carry out them previous warning to the local administrative
authority, ahead of time of twenty-four hours.
The authority can take measures from police to prevent or to repress abuses in the exercise of this fact, when the form that is exerted
causes or can cause disturbance of the transit, alteration of the public order or violation of the rights of rights of third.
Article 39. - It is allowed to forms companies, associations and foundations that are not opposite to the moral or the order it bequeaths,
which can obtain their recognition like legal people. Recognition to the associations inspired by ideas or theories based on the tried
superiority of a race or an ethnic group will not be granted, or that justifies or promotes the racial discrimination.
The capacity, the recognition and the regime of the societies and other legal people will be determined by the Panamanian Law.
Article 40. - All person is free to exert any profession or subject office to the regulations that the Law with respect to social suitability,
morality, forecast and security, school registration, public health, obligatory syndication and quotations establishes.
Tax or contribution for the exercise of the liberal professions and the offices and the arts will not settle down.
Article 41. - All person must right to present/display respectful requests and complaints to the servants public by reasons for social or
particular interest, and the one to obtain quick resolution.
The public servant before whom appears a request, consults or complains will have to solve within the term of thirty days.
The Law will indicate the sanctions that correspond to the violation of this norm.
Article 42. - The Ministers of the religious cults, in addition to the inherent functions to their mission, will only be able to exert the
positions public who are related to the social attendance, the education or the scientific research.
Article 43. - The laws do not have retroactive effect, except those of public order or social interest when in them therefore it is expressed.
In criminal matter the favorable Law to the criminal always has preference and retroactivity, even though was ejecutoriada sentence.
Article 44. - The acquired private property in accordance with the Law by legal or natural people is guaranteed.
Article 45. - The private property implies obligation for its owner because of the social function that must fill.
By reasons for defined public utility or social interest in the Law, it can have expropriation by means of special judgment and
indemnification.
Article 46. - When of the application of a law sent by reasons for utility or from social interest the rights of individuals with the necessity
recognized by the same law are in conflict, the private interest will have to yield to the interest of the social public or.
Article 47. - In case military, of serious disturbance of the public order or of urgent social interest, that demands fast measures, the
Executive can decree to the expropriation or occupation of the private property.
When the return of the occupied object was feasible, the single occupation will be by the time that lasts the circumstances that will have
caused it.
The State is always responsible by all expropriation that thus carries out the executive and by the damages and damages caused by the
occupation, and will pay its value when it has stopped the determining reason for the expropriation or occupation.
Article 48. - Nobody is forced to pay contribution nor is imposed, that legally will not be established and whose cobranza will not become
in the form prescribed by the laws.
Article 49. - All author, artist or inventor enjoy the exclusive property of his work or invention during the time and in the form that the law
establishes.
Article 50. - All person against which she is sent or executed, by any public servant, an order to do or not to do, that violates the rights
and guarantees that are constitution consecrates, will have right to that the order is revoked to request hers or of any person.
The resource of shelter of constitutional guarantees to that this article talks about, will be transacted by means of summary procedure and
will be of competition of the judicial courts.
Article 51. - In outer case military or of internal disturbance that threatens La Paz and the public order, all the Republic will be able to be
declared in emergency or leaves from her and to suspend temporarily, of partial or total way, the effects of articles 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29,
37, 38 and 44 of the Constitution.
The emergency and the suspension of the effects of the mentioned constitutional norms will be declared by the Executive agency by
means of decree decided in Advice of Cabinet. The Legislative Organ, by own right or at the request of the President of the Republic, will
have to know the declaration of the referred state if he himself extends by more than ten days and to confirm or to revoke, total or
partially, the decisions made by the Council of Cabinet, related to the emergency.
When stopping the cause that the declaration of the emergency has motivated, the Legislative Organ, if he were reunited, or, if he will not
be it, the Council of Cabinet will raise the emergency.
Chapter 2
The Family
Article 52. - The State protects the marriage, the maternity and the family. The law will determine the relative thing to the civil state.
The State will protect the physical, mental and moral health of the minors and will guarantee the social right of these to the feeding, health,
education and security and forecast.
Also they will have right to this protection the old and ill destitute.
Article 53. - The marriage is the legal foundation of the family, rests in the equality of rights of the spouses and can be dissolved in
agreement with the Law.
Article 54. - The union in fact between people legally enabled to contract marriage, maintained during five years consecutive in conditions
of singularity and stability, will have all the desired effects of the civil marriage.
For this aim which will be enough that the interested parts jointly ask for to the civil registry the marriage inscription in fact, will be able
to be transacted by interval of the corridors. When that request has not taken place the marriage will be able to be verified, for the effects
of the claim of its rights, by one of the spouses or interested other, by means of the proceedings that the law determines. They will be
able, however, to be against to that the inscription is made or oppose it after made the Public Ministry in interest of the moral and the law,
or third that allege rights susceptible to be affected by the inscription, if the declaration will be opposite to the reality of the facts.
Article 55. - The mother country power is the set of duties and rights that have the parents in relation to the children.
The parents are forced to feed, to educate and to protect their children so that they obtain a good raising and an adapted physical and
spiritual development, and these to respect them and to attend them.
The law will regulate the exercise of the mother country power in agreement with the social interest and the benefit of the children.
Article 56. - The parents have towards their children had outside the marriage same the duties that respect to the been born ones in him.
All the children are equal before the Law and have he himself hereditary right in the paternal successions. The Law will recognize the
rights of the smaller or invalid children and the destitute parents in the made a will successions.
Article 57. - The law will regulate the investigation of the paternity. It is abolished all qualification on the nature of the connection.
Declaration will not be briefed some that establishes difference in the birth or on the civil state of the parents in acts of inscription of
those, nor in any report, game of baptism or certificate referring to the connection.
Faculty to the father of the son born prior to the use of this constitution is granted to protect it with the arranged thing in this article, by
means of the rectification of any act or filling up in which is established classification some with respect to this son. The consent of the
mother is not required for this. If the son is of legal age, this one must grant its consent.
In the acts of paternity simulation, it will be able to object this measurement that is affected by the act legally.
The Law will indicate the procedure.
Article 58. - The State will guard by the social and economic improvement of the family and will organize the familiar patrimony
determining the nature and quantity of the goods that must constitute it, on the base of which he is inalienable and unattachable.
Article 59. - The State will create an organism destined to protect the family with the purpose of:
1. To promote the responsible paternity and the maternity by means of the familiar education.
2. To institutionalize the education of the disabled in specialized centers to take care of those whose parents or tutors therefore ask for it.
3. To protect the old minors and, and to guard and to readapt socially to the left ones, abandoning, in moral danger or with misalignments
of conduct.
The law will organize and determine the operation of the special jurisdiction of minors which, among other functions, will know on the
investigation of the paternity, the desertion of family and the problems of youthful conduct.
Chapter 3
The Work
Article 60. - The work is a right and to have of the individual, and therefore it is an obligation of the State to elaborate political economic
directed to promote the total use and to assure to all worker the necessary conditions to a decent existence.
Article 61. - To all worker to the service of the State or public or deprived companies or particular individuals its wage or minimum pay is
guaranteed to him. The workers of the company that the Law determines will participate in the utilities of the same ones, in agreement
with the economic conditions of the country.
Article 62. - The Law will establish the way periodically to fit to the wage or minimum pay of the worker, with the purpose of covering
the normal necessities with its family, to improve its standard of life, according to the particular conditions of each region and each
economic activity; it will be able to determine also the method to fix minimum wages or pays by profession or office.
In the works by task or piece, it is obligatory that insured has left the minimum wage by piece or day.
The minimum of all wage or pay is unattachable, except for the nutritional obligations in the form that establishes the Law. The
instruments of work of the workers are also unattachable.
Article 63. - To equal work in identical conditions, it corresponds always equal wage or pay, nobodies that are the people who make it,
without distinction of sex, nationality, age, race, social class, political or religious ideas.
Article 64. - The right of syndication is recognized the employers, wage-earning and professional of all classes for the aims of its
economic and social activity.
The executive will have a improrrogable time of thirty days to admit or to reject the inscription of a union.
The Law will regulate concerning the recognition by the Executive of the unions, whose legal function and position of agent will be
determined by the inscription.
The Executive will not be able to dissolve a union but when aside permanently of his aims and thus competent court by means of firm
sentence is declared.
The directors of these associations will be integrated exclusively of Panamanians.
Article 65. - The strike right is recognized. The law will regulate its exercise and will be able to put under it special restrictions in the
services public who it determines.
Article 66. - The Maxima day of diurnal work is of eight hours and the workable week of up to forty and eight: the nocturnal Maxima day
will not be greater of seven hours and the extraordinary hours will be remunerated with surcharge.
The Maxima day could be reduced up to six hours daily for greater of fourteen years and minors of eighteen. One prohibits the work to
the minors of fourteen years and the nocturnal one to the sixteen minors, except for the exceptions that the Law establishes. One also
prohibits the use of minors up to fourteen years in quality of domestic crew members and the work of the minors and the women in
unhealthy occupations.
In addition to the weekly rest, all worker will have right to remunerated vacations.
The Law will be able to establish the weekly rest remunerated in agreement with the economic and social conditions of the country and
the benefit of the workers.
Article 67. - They are null, and therefore, they do not force the contractors, although they express in an agreement of work or another
pact anyone, the stipulations that imply resignation, diminution, adulteration or carelessness of some right recognized in favor of the
worker. The Law will regulate all the relative one to the work contract.
Article 68. - The maternity of the woman is protected worker. The one that it is in pregnant state it could not be separated of his public or
particular use by this cause. During a minimum of six weeks originating to the childbirth and the eight that follow to him, it will enjoy in
the same way of repaid unavoidable rest that its work and will conserve the use and all the rights corresponding to its contract. When
getting up itself the mother worker to her use could not be dismissed by the term of a year, safe in anticipated special cases in the Law,
which will regulate in addition, the special conditions of work of the woman in prenatal state.
Article 69. - The hiring of foreign workers is prohibited who can reduce the conditions of work or the norms of life of the national
worker. The Law will regulate the hiring of Managers, Administrative and Executive, technical and professional foreigners for services
public and deprived Directors, always assuring the rights the Panamanians and in agreement with the national interest.
Article 70. - No worker could be dismissed without right cause and the formalities that the Law establishes. This will indicate the right
causes for the special dismissal, its exceptions and the corresponding indemnification.
Article 71. - The State or the private company will distribute gratuitous professional education to the worker. The Law will regulate the
form to serve this.
Article 72. - The union qualification settles down. It will be exclusively distributed by the State and the Panamanian union organizations.
Article 73. - All the controversies that originate the relations between the capital and the work, are put under the jurisdiction of the work
that will be exerted in accordance with the arranged thing by the Law.
Article 74. - The Law will regulate the relations between the capital and the work, placing them on a base of social justice and fixing a
special state protection to benefit of the workers.
Article 75. - The rights and guarantees exerted in this Chapter will be considered like minimums in favor of the workers.
Chapter 4
Nacional culture
Article 76. - The State recognizes the right of all human being to participate in the culture and therefore it must foment the participation of
all the inhabitants of the Republic in the national culture.
Article 77. - The national culture this constituted by the artistic, philosophical and scientific manifestations produced by the man in
Panama through the times.
The State will promote, develop and guard east cultural patrimony.
Article 78. - The State will guard by the defense, diffusion and purity of the Spanish language.
Article 79. - The State will formulate the national scientific policy destined to promote the development of science and the technology.
Article 80. - The State recognizes the individuality and the universal value of the artistic work; it will support and stimulate to the national
artists disclosing his works through systems of cultural direction and will promote at national level the development of the art in all his
manifestations by means of academic institutions, of spreading and recreation.
Article 81. - The sites and archaeological objects Constitute the historical patrimony of the Nation, the documents, the monuments
historical and other personal or immovable property that is testimony of the past Panamanian. The State will decree the expropriation of
which they are into the hands of individuals. The Law will regulate concerning its safekeeping, founded on primacy historical of such and
will take the providences necessary to conciliate it with the feasibility of programs of commercial, tourist, industrial character and of
technological order.
Article 82. - The State will foment the development of the physical culture by means of sport institutions, of education and recreation that
will be regulated by the Law.
Article 83. - The State recognizes that the traditions folkloric constitute part to medular of the national culture and therefore it will
promote his study, conservation and spreading, establishing his primacy on manifestations or tendencies that adulterate it.
Article 84. - The native languages will be object of special study, conservation and spreading and the State will promote programs of
bilingual alphabetization in the indigenous communities.
Article 85. - The social mass media are instruments of information, education, recreation and cultural and scientific diffusion. When the
publicity or the diffusion of propaganda is used for, these do not have to be opposite to the health, the moral, the education, cultural
formation of the society and the national conscience. The Law will regulate its operation.
Article 86. - The State recognizes and respects the ethnic identity of the national indigenous communities, will make tendientes programs
to develop material, social and spiritual the values own of each one of its cultures and will create an institution for the study, conservation,
spreading of the same ones and their languages, as well as the promotion of the integral development of these human groups.
Chapter 5
Education
Article 87. - All have right to the education and the responsibility to be educated. The State organizes and directs the public service of the
national education and guarantees to the family parents the right to participate in the educative process of its children. The education is
based on science, uses its methods. It foments his growth and diffusion and it applies his results to assure the development the human
person and the family, like the affirmation and fortification of the Panamanian Nation like cultural and political community. The education
democratic and is founded on human principles of solidarity and social justice.
Article 88. - The education must take care of the harmonic and integral development of educating within the social coexistence, in the
aspects physical, intellectual and moral, aesthetic and civic and must try its qualification for the useful work in own interest and collective
benefit.
Article 89. - It is recognized that it is purpose of the Panamanian education of fomenting in the student a national conscience based on the
knowledge of history and the problems of the mother country.
Article 90. - The freedom of education is guaranteed and the right is recognized to create particular teaching institutions with subjection to
the Law. The State will be able to take part in particular the educational establishments so that they fulfill in them the national and social
aims of the culture and intellectual, moral, civic and physical the formation of the curriculum. The public education is the one that
distributes the official dependencies and the particular education is the distributed one by the private organizations. The education
establishments, are particular officials or, are open to all the students, without race distinction social position, political ideas, religion or
nature of the union of their ancestors or security personnel. The Law will regulate so much the public education as the particular
education.
Article 91. - The official education is gratuitous in all the levels pre-college students. The first level of education or general basic education
is obligatory. The gratuity implies the State to provide to educating the all necessary equipment for its learning while it completes his
general basic education. The gratuity of the education does not prevent the establishment of a right of matriculation paid in the
nonobligatory levels.
Article 92. - The Law will determine the state dependency that it will elaborate and approve the plans of studies, the educative programs
of education and levels, as well as the organization of a system of national of educative direction, all they in accordance with ace national
necessities.
Article 93. - The labor education settles down, like a modality not to regulate of education system, with programs of basic education and
special qualification.
Article 94. - The particular companies whose operations significantly alter the scholastic population in a determined area, will contribute to
take care of the educative necessities in accordance with the official norms and the urbanizing companies will have this same
responsibility as far as the sectors that they develop.
Article 95. - The academic and professional titles are only recognized sent by the authorized Be in favor or of this one in agreement with
the Law. The Official University of the State will control to the particular universities approved officially to guarantee the titles that they
send and will revalidate those of foreign universities in the cases that the Law establishes.
Article 96. - The education will be distributed in the official language, but by reasons for public interest the Law will be able to allow that
in some establishments this one is also distributed in foreign language. The education of the history of Panama and the civic education will
be dictated by Panamanians.
Article 97. - The Law will be able to create economic incentives in benefit of the public education and the particular education, as well as
for the national didactic work edition.
Article 98. - The State will establish systems that provide the suitable resources to grant scholarships, aid or other economic benefits to
the students who deserve it or need it. In equality of circumstances it will be preferred to economically more needed.
Article 99. - The Official University of the Republic is independent. Legal function and position of agent is recognized to him, own and
right patrimony to administer it. It has faculty to organize his studies and to designate and to separate his personnel in the form that
determines the Law. It will include in his activities the study of the national problems as well as the diffusion of the national culture. Equal
importance to the distributed university education in Regional Centers will occur that to the granted one in the capital.
Article 100. - To make the economic autonomy effective of the University, the State will equip it with the indispensable thing for its
installation, operation and future development, as well as of the patrimony which it deals with the previous Article and of means necessary
to increase it.
Article 101. - The freedom of chair without other limitations is recognized that those that, for reasons of public order, the University
Statute establishes.
Article 102. - The exceptional nature of the student, in all its manifestations, will be taken care of by means of special education, cradle in
the scientific research and educative direction.
Article 103. - The catholic religion in the state schools will be taught, but their learning and the attendance to the religious cults will not be
obligatory when they ask for his parents or tutors.
Article 104. - The State will develop to programs of education and promotion for indigenous groups since they have own cultural
patterns, in order to obtain its active participation in the citizen function.
Chapter 6
Health, Social Security and Social Attendance
Article 105. - It is essential function of the velar Be in favor of the health of the population of the Republic. The individual, like part of the
community, has right to the promotion, protection, conservation, restitution and rehabilitation of the health and the obligation to conserve
it, understood this one like the complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Article 106. - In health matter, the development of the following activities corresponds fundamentally to the State, integrating the
functions of prevention, treatment and rehabilitation:
1. To develop to a national policy of feeding and nutrition that an optimal nutritional state for all the population assures, when promoting
the availability, the consumption and the biological advantage of suitable foods.
2. To enable to the individual and the social groups, by means of educative actions, that spread to the knowledge of the duties and
individual and collective rights in the matter of personal and environmental health.
3. To protect the health of the mother, the boy and the adolescent, guaranteeing an integral attention during the gestation process,
lactation, growth and development in the childhood and adolescence.
4. To fight the transmissible diseases by means of the environmental cleaning, the development of the potable water availability and to
adopt measures of immunization, prophylaxis and treatment, provided collectively or individually, to all the population.
5. To create, in agreement with the necessities of each region, establishments in which service of integral health is lent and they provide
medicines to all the population. These services of health and medicines will be provided gratuitously to those who lack economic
resources.
6. To regulate and to watch the fulfillment of the conditions of health and the security that must reunite to the work places, establishing a
national medicine policy and industrial and labor hygiene.
Article 107. - The State will have to develop a non-political medicine national who promotes the production, availability, accessibility,
quality and control of medicines for all the population of the country.
Article 108. - It is to have of the State to establish a population policy that responds to the necessities of the social and economic
development of the country.
Article 109. - All individual has right to the security of its economic means of subsistence in case of incapacity to work or to obtain repaid
work. Of social security will be served or administered by independent organizations and will cover the cases with disease, maternity,
disability, subsidy of family, oldness, widowhood, orphanhood, unavoidable unemployment, professional industrial accidents, diseases and
the other contingencies that can be objects of forecast and social security. The Law will provide the implantation with such services as
the necessities demand it. The State will create establishments of social attendance and forecast. The economic and social rehabilitation of
the dependent or devoid sectors of resources and the chronic attention of the mentally incapable ones, patients, the indigents disabled and
of the groups are fundamental tasks of these that have not been incorporated to the social security system.
Article 110. - The State will be able to create complementary bottoms with the contribution and participation of the workers of the
companies public and deprived in order to improve the services of social security in the matter of retirements. The Law will regulate this
matter.
Article 111. - The governmental sectors of health, including their independent and semi independent institutions, are integrated organic and
functionally. The Law will regulate this matter.
Article 112. - The communities must have and the right to participate in the planning, execution and evaluation of the different programs
from health.
Article 113. - The State will establish a national policy of house destined to provide the enjoyment of this social right to all the population,
specially to the sectors of smaller entrance.
Chapter 7
Ecological Régime
Article 114. - It is to have fundamental of the State to guarantee that the alive population in a healthy and free atmosphere of
contamination, in where the air, the water and the foods satisfy the requirements with the adapted development of the human life.
Article 115. - The State and all the inhabitants of the national territory have must cause a social and economic development that prevents
the contamination with the atmosphere, maintains the balance ecological and avoids the destruction of the ecosystems.
Article 116. - The State will opportunely regulate, control and apply the measures necessary to guarantee that the use and the advantage of
the terrestrial, fluvial and marine fauna, as well as of the forests, earth and waters, are carried out rationally, so that its depredation is
avoided and it makes sure his preservation, renovation and permanence.
Article 117. - The Law will regulate the advantage of nonrenewable the natural resources, in order to avoid that from he himself social
damages are derived, economic and environmental.
Chapter 8
Agrarian Régime
Article 118. - The State will pay special attention to the integral development of the farming sector, will foment the optimal advantage of
the ground, will guard by its rational distribution and its suitable use and conservation in order to maintain it in productive conditions and
will guarantee the right of all agriculturist to a decent existence.
Article 119. - The State will not allow to the existence of areas incultas, unproductive and idle and will regulate the relations of work in the
land, having fomented a Maxima productivity and joust distribution of the benefits of this one.
Article 120. - The State will give to special attention to the communities farmers and natives with the purpose of promoting its economic,
social and political participation in the national life.
Article 121. - The correct agricultural Earth use is to have of the proprietor towards the community and will be regulated by the Law in
accordance with its ecological classification in order to avoid the sub use and diminution of its productive potential.
Article 122. - For the fulfillment of the aims of the agrarian policy, the State will develop the following activities:
1. To equip the farmers with territories of work necessary and to regulate the use of waters. The Law will be able to establish a special
regime of collective property for the communities farmers who ask for it.
2. To organize the credit attendance to satisfy the organized necessities of financing of the farming activity and, in to the special, of the
sector of limited resources and their groups and to give special attention small and medium producer.
3. To take measures to assure stable markets and equitable prices to products and to impel the establishment of organizations,
corporations and cooperatives of production, industrialization, distribution and consumption.
4. To establish mass media and transport to unite the communities farmers and natives with the storage centers distribution and
consumption.
5. To colonize new earth and to regulate the possession and the use of the same ones and of which they as resulting from integrate to the
economy the construction of new highways.
6. To stimulate the development of the agrarian sector by means of technical attendance and promotion of the organization, qualification,
protection, automation and other forms that the Law determines.
7. To make Earth studies in order to establish the agricological classification of the Panamanian ground. The policy established for this
Chapter will be applicable to the indigenous communities in agreement with the scientific methods of cultural change.
Article 123. - The State guarantees to the indigenous communities the reserve of necessary earth and the collective property of the same
ones for the profit of its economic and social well-being. The Law will regulate the procedures that must be followed to obtain this
purpose and the corresponding boundaries within which the deprived appropriation of earth is prohibited.
Article 124. - The agrarian jurisdiction settles down and the Law will determine the organization and distribution of its courts.
TITLE IV
POLITICAL RIGHTS
Chapter 1
Of the Citizenship
Article 125. - All the greater Panamanians of eighteen years Are citizen of the Republic, without sex distinction.
Article 126. - The political rights and the capacity to exert positions public with control and jurisdiction, are reserved to the Panamanian
citizens.
Article 127. - The exercise of the citizen rights is suspended: 1. By the cause expressed in article 13 of this Constitution. 2. By pain
according to the Law.
Article 128. - The Law will regulate the suspension and recovery of the citizenship.
Chapter 2
The Suffrage
Article 129. - The suffrage is a right and to have of all the citizens. The vote is free, equal, universal, secret and direct.
Article 130. - The authorities are forced to guarantee the freedom and honesty of the suffrage. They are prohibited:
1. The direct or indirect official support to candidates to positions of popular election, even though will be guarded the average employees
to such aim.
2. The activities of propaganda and partisan affiliation in the public offices.
3. The exacción of quotas or contributions to the employees public for political aims, to pretext of which they are even voluntary.
4. Any act that it prevents or it makes difficult to a citizen to personally obtain, to keep or to present/display his identity card. The Law
will tipificará the electoral crimes and will indicate the sanctions respective.
Article 131. - The conditions of eligibility to be candidates in charge of popular election, on the part of officials government, will be
defined in the Law.
Article 132. - The political parties express political pluralism, concur to the formation and manifestation of the popular will and are
fundamental instruments for the political participation, without damage of the free postulation in the form anticipated in the Law. The Law
will regulate the recognition and subsistence of the political parties, without, in no case, it can establish that the number of the necessary
votes for their subsistence is superior to the five percent of the emitted valid votes in the elections for President, Legislators or
Representatives of Groups of judges, according to the favorable voting to the party.
Article 133. - The formation of parties is not allowed that have by base sex, the race, the religion or which they tend to destroy the
democratic form of Government.
Article 134. - The political parties will have right, in equality of conditions, to the use of social mass media that the Central Government
administers and to successfully obtain and to receive information of all the public authorities on any matter of his competition, which they
do not refer the reserved diplomatic relations.
Article 135. - The State will be able to control and to contribute to the expenses which the natural people and the political parties in the
electoral processes incur. The Law will determine and regulate these controls and contributions, assuring the equality erogaciones of all
party or candidate.
Chapter 3
The Electoral Court
Article 136. - With the intention of guaranteeing the freedom, honesty and effectiveness of the popular suffrage, an independent Court will
be established. Legal function and position of agent is recognized to him, own and right patrimony to administer it. It will interpret and
apply the Electoral Law privatively, it will direct, watch and control the inscription of vital facts, deaths, naturalization and other facts and
legal transactions related to the civil state of the people; the expedition of the personal identity card and the phases of the electoral process.
The Court will have jurisdiction in all the Republic and he will be made up of three Magistrates who such reunite requisite that they
demand to be Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice, which will be designated for a period of ten years, thus: one by the Legislative
Organ, another one by the Executive agency and third by Supreme Court of Justice, between people who do not comprise of the
nominating authority. For each main one two substitutes will name in the same form, who could not be civil employees of the Electoral
Court. The Magistrates of the Electoral Court are responsible before the Supreme Court for Justice by the lack or crimes committed in the
exercise of their functions and are to them applicable articles 202, 205, 207, 208, 209 and 213 with the sanctions that the law determines.
Article 137. - The Electoral Court will have in addition to which to him the Law confers, the following attributions that will exert
provativamente, except the briefed ones in numerals 5 and 7:
1. To carry out the inscriptions of births, marriages, deaths, naturalizations and other facts and legal transactions related to the civil state
of the people and to make the preceding annotations in the respective inscriptions.
2. To issue the personal identity card.
3. To regulate the Electoral Law, to interpret it and to apply it and to know the controversies that originate their application.
4. To sanction the lack and crimes against the freedom and purity of the suffrage and in accordance with the Law.
5. To raise the Electoral roll.
6. To organize, to direct and to control the registry of voters and to solve the controversies, complaints and denunciations that on the
matter will happen.
7. To transact the files of the requests of migration and naturalization.
8. To name the members of the electoral corporations, in which the representation of the legally constituted political parties will be due to
guarantee. The Law will regulate this matter. The decisions of the Electoral Court are recurribles before he himself and once fulfilled the
proceedings of Law, will be solely definitive, irrevocable and obligatory. The referring thing to the unconstitutionality resource is excepted.
Article 138. - The Electoral Office of the public prosecutor is an agency of independent and helping instruction of the Electoral Court. The
Electoral Public prosecutor will be named by the subject Executive agency to the approval of the Legislative Organ, by a period of ten
years; he will have to fill such requisite that stops to be Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice and will have equal restrictions. Their
functions are:
1. To safeguard the political rights of the citizens.
2. To watch the official conduct of the officials electoral government with regard to the rights and political duties.
3. To persecute the electoral crimes and contraventions.
4. To exert the other functions that the Law indicates.
Article 139. - The public authorities are forced to accept and carry out an order and emanated decisions of the civil employees of the
electoral jurisdiction, lending to these obedience, cooperation and aid that they require for the performance of his attributions. The
omission or negligence in the fulfillment of such obligation will be sanctioned in agreement with which it arranges the Law.
The region of what is now known as Panama has a rich indigenous history spanning some
12,000 years before being claimed by Spain in 1501. In 1513, Balboa, intrigued by native
claims, pushed across the isthmus to verify the existence of the Pacific Ocean. In 1698
Scotland made a futile attempt to establish a permanent settlement in an event called the
Darien Scheme. Spain maintained possession until 1821 when the Isthmus joined the
"Gran", or Greater Colombia. With little support from Greater Colombia, Panama declared its
independence in July of 1831 which touched off a civil war and the creation of a constitution
in March 1841 making Panama a department of New Grenada. Colombia negotiated a treaty
with the United States in 1846 to construct a railroad across the Isthmus which was
completed in 1855. The treaty required the United States to protect Colombia from any
further efforts for independence which they successfully suppressed until 1903, though the
constitutions of 1858 and 1863 granted Panama limited self-governance. Beginning in 1880
the French attempted to duplicate their Suez success and construct a Canal but abandoned
the project in 1889. With Colombia unwilling to allow the United States to have control over
the isthmus, the US convinced the wealthy, conservative Panamanian families to declare
independence with the backing of the United States and on 9 November 1903, Panama once
again declared independence with US military backing. Panama's republic government was
under the strict control of a commercial oligarchy until 1968 when a military coup overthrew
President Dr. Arnulfo Arias Madrid and installed National Guard, Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos. A
new constitution was promulgated on 11 October 1972. On 7 September 1977, the United
States agreed to return the Canal back to the control of Panama in 1999. Torrijos undertook
major reforms to the Constitution in 1978. The mysterious death of Torrijos and the rise of
Gen. Manuel Noriega created a tenuous relationship with the United States during which he
once again reformed the Constitution in 1983. When Noriega nullified the election of May
1989, citing U.S. interference, the United States launched an invasion of Panama on 20
December, 1989, seizing control of Panama and arresting Noriega to face charges on drug
trafficking for which he was convicted. Further revisions have been undertaken with the
Constitution in 1994 and 2004 conforming with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of which Panama is a signatory. The following are those articles specifically
pertaining to human rights. A full English translation has not yet been formally undertaken
but the original Spanish text can be found here. For a partially completed Google translation
of the Panama Constitution, click here.
12,000 years before being claimed by Spain in 1501. In 1513, Balboa, intrigued by native
claims, pushed across the isthmus to verify the existence of the Pacific Ocean. In 1698
Scotland made a futile attempt to establish a permanent settlement in an event called the
Darien Scheme. Spain maintained possession until 1821 when the Isthmus joined the
"Gran", or Greater Colombia. With little support from Greater Colombia, Panama declared its
independence in July of 1831 which touched off a civil war and the creation of a constitution
in March 1841 making Panama a department of New Grenada. Colombia negotiated a treaty
with the United States in 1846 to construct a railroad across the Isthmus which was
completed in 1855. The treaty required the United States to protect Colombia from any
further efforts for independence which they successfully suppressed until 1903, though the
constitutions of 1858 and 1863 granted Panama limited self-governance. Beginning in 1880
the French attempted to duplicate their Suez success and construct a Canal but abandoned
the project in 1889. With Colombia unwilling to allow the United States to have control over
the isthmus, the US convinced the wealthy, conservative Panamanian families to declare
independence with the backing of the United States and on 9 November 1903, Panama once
again declared independence with US military backing. Panama's republic government was
under the strict control of a commercial oligarchy until 1968 when a military coup overthrew
President Dr. Arnulfo Arias Madrid and installed National Guard, Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos. A
new constitution was promulgated on 11 October 1972. On 7 September 1977, the United
States agreed to return the Canal back to the control of Panama in 1999. Torrijos undertook
major reforms to the Constitution in 1978. The mysterious death of Torrijos and the rise of
Gen. Manuel Noriega created a tenuous relationship with the United States during which he
once again reformed the Constitution in 1983. When Noriega nullified the election of May
1989, citing U.S. interference, the United States launched an invasion of Panama on 20
December, 1989, seizing control of Panama and arresting Noriega to face charges on drug
trafficking for which he was convicted. Further revisions have been undertaken with the
Constitution in 1994 and 2004 conforming with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of which Panama is a signatory. The following are those articles specifically
pertaining to human rights. A full English translation has not yet been formally undertaken
but the original Spanish text can be found here. For a partially completed Google translation
of the Panama Constitution, click here.