 Chile is in the final stage of approving a new constitution. Last week, the Constitutional Convention finalized the draft of a new constitution that will soon be voted on in a national referendum. The President of the Assembly, María Lisa Quinteros, formally presented the draft at a ceremony in the port city of Antofagasta on Monday, May 16. The final draft was agreed upon after 10 months of intense negotiations and more than 10 plenary sessions of the Constitutional Convention. If approved, the new draft constitution will replace the current neoliberal, pro-free market constitution. The old constitution had come into effect during the dictatorial, right-wing regime of General Augusto Pinochet. The referendum is going to be held on September 4, in which all citizens, age 18 and above, must vote. The draft will now also be reviewed by the Harmonization, Transitory and Preamble Commissions, before being put up for referendum. The draft constitution enshrines a number of new rights and freedoms, such as free higher education, universal access to health care, reproductive rights, pensions, indigenous and water rights. It also includes clauses for advancing gender equality, protecting the environment, directing the state to combat climate change, besides also codifying compensation for historical land dispossession of indigenous peoples. Abortion rights were won as a result of a campaign which had gathered 15,000 signatures in support for broader abortion rights. The procedure is currently only legal in cases of rape, fatal abnormalities in the fetus, or a threat to life. The draft establishes that the state will guarantee the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights without discrimination, as well as sex education as part of the curriculum. According to reports, this is only the second constitution in the world, after Ecuador's, to constitutionally recognize the rights of nature. Among its political and systemic changes, it abolishes the Senate with a unicameral Chamber of Regions and allows for immediate presidential re-election. The draft constitution is a result of countrywide protests over chronic economic inequality in October 2019, in which 36 protesters were killed and hundreds of others injured in the ensuing government crackdown. These protests forced then-president Sebastian Pineda to announce a plebiscite, giving Chileans the option to rewrite the country's constitution. The 1980 constitution put in place by General Pinochet was overwhelmingly voted out by 80% of Chileans, paving the way for the new constitution.