(Articles 2, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 18 of the African Charter and the Protocol on Women’s Rights): 360. This is the area where the country has actually taken a leapfrog compared to other States Parties to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. 361. In fact, since independence, Senegal has always been concerned about women’s issues in the country and this determination found concrete expression in the gradual adoption of a protective normative framework and the establishment of policies for the removal of inequalities between men and women though a lot of hurdles still have to be removed to ensure that gender equality is fully actualized. a. Positive Development of the protective normative framework : (1) Improving the status of women in the 2001 Constitution : 362. Several provisions of the new Constitution of 2001 reinforce the enjoyment of equal rights set out in the African Charter:         Equality between men and women in respect of access to elective mandates and positions (Articles 1 and 7) ; Right to education, namely reading and writing, work, health and to safe environment (Article 8) ; Right to acquire and own landed property (paragraph 2 of Article 15) ; Right to the betterment of living conditions of women in rural communities (Article 17) ; Prohibition of forced marriages (Article 18) ; Right of the married woman to acquire her own property just as the husband and to personally manage her property (Article 19) ; Right of children of both sexes to have access to schools (paragraph 2 of Article 22) ; Prohibition of any discrimination between men and women with regard to employment, salary and taxes (paragraph 2 of Article 25). (2) Efforts made commitments : to harmonize national legislation with international 363. In addition to the amendments made in the 1972 Family Code, Senegalese authorities reviewed the contents of several legislative and regulatory texts with the aim of honoring their treaty commitments:  Law No 1999-05 of 29 January 1999 which enhanced the penalty for offences such as rape, excision, indecent assault, incest and sexual harassment ; 83