2003 Loya Jirga - Drafting The Constitution

Drafting The Constitution

The Bonn Agreement of December 2001 required Afghanistan to draft and adopt a new constitution within 2 years. In October 2002, Interim President Hamid Karzai appointed a nine member Constitutional Drafting Commission, chaired by then Vice-President Nematullah Shahrani. Over the next six months, this body drafted a new constitution, based largely on the 1964 Afghan constitution. The initial draft, written primarily by Abdul Salam Azimi (who would become Chief Justice of Afghanistan's Supreme Court in 2006) was not the subject of in-depth political consultation. In April 2003, Interim President Karzai passed a decree appointing a new 35-member Constitutional Commission and laying out a public consultation process. This commission travelled widely throughout the country and reworked the draft, which was not released to the public until November 2003, only weeks before the Constitutional Convention (Loya Jirga) was scheduled to begin. This process was supported by several international institutions that provided funding, mostly through the UN, and expertise.