Until now, finding laws that lay the foundation for equality in these areas required searching for applicable legislation for each country. While important efforts, such as the ILO’s NATLEX database or UNESCO’s Observatory on the Right to Education, pulled together legislation related to work and education, the scope of these databases made it challenging to find the most relevant pieces of legislation and the most up-to-date laws were not always available. To support policymakers, advocates, and researchers seeking to find the laws that matter to specific policy areas, we’ve created this initiative that brings together all relevant pieces of legislation for all 193 countries across five policy areas that matter deeply to equality.
To build these repositories, we searched for relevant pieces of legislation for each topic area. For all of the more recent datasets, we searched all country websites for legislation, in addition to using the valuable resources provided by UN online repositories. We carried out cross-checks with the following research-based sources: International Review of Leave Policies and Related Research, Mutual Information System on Social Protection, Mutual Information on Social Protection of the Council of Europe, Social Security Programs Throughout the World, the European Commission’s review of National Education Systems, Lexadin World Law Guide, Foreign Law Guide, Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute, Asian Legal Information Institute, Constitution Finder, Hein Online, and JaFBase, among others. For those seeking current legislation, we hope this will serve as foundation from which updates can be more readily searched. Each repository includes hundreds if not thousands of legal documents that were used to code key features of policies that lay the foundation for equal opportunities in the area, enabling stakeholders to read and compare legislative text across countries. These files are hosted on the WORLD Policy Analysis Center collection on the Harvard Dataverse.
Within each collection, separate zip files are available for each region. Files can be downloaded individually by clicking on the preview icon (an eye).
To access the legislative text, please explore the below resources:
- Legislation for Workplace Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Laws in 193 Countries in 2024 includes labor codes, anti-discrimination legislation, anti-violence laws, equal opportunity legislation, penal codes, and other relevant pieces of legislation prohibiting discrimination and sexual harassment at work. All laws in effect as of January 2024 are included, whether they were recently passed or are decades old laws that were still in force. Laws span prohibitions of discrimination across race and/or ethnicity, gender and sex, disability status, religion, political affiliation, social class, age, migrant status, foreign national origin, marital status, pregnancy, care responsibilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics.
- Legal Documents for Education in 193 Countries in 2023 includes education acts, child protection legislation, disability rights acts, gender equality acts, anti-discrimination legislation, and non-legislative policy and government commitments governing tuition-free and compulsory education from pre-primary through completion of secondary, disability rights in education, and gender equality in education. All laws and policies in effect as of January 2023 are included, whether they were recently passed or are decades old laws that were still in force.
- Legislation for Child Marriage in 193 Countries in 2023 includes marriage laws, family laws, civil laws, gender equality laws, gender-based violence laws, criminal codes, and other relevant pieces of legislation governing minimum age of marriage, including with parental consent and under religious and customary law. All laws in effect as of May 2023 are included, whether they were recently passed or are decades old laws that are still in force.
- Legislation for Infant Caregiving Policies in 193 Countries in 2022 includes labor legislation, social security legislation, work-family legislation, maternity protection legislation, gender equality legislation, and other relevant pieces of legislation governing paid parental leave and breastfeeding breaks at work. All laws in effect as of January 2022 are included, whether they were recently passed or are decades old laws that are still in force.
- Legislation for Paid Leave for Family Health Needs in 193 Countries in 2022 includes labor legislation, social security legislation, work-family legislation, health leave legislation, and other relevant pieces of legislation governing paid leave for workers to meet their children and adult family members' health needs. All laws in effect as of January 2022 are included, whether they were recently passed or are decades old laws that are still in force.
