Theme Committees contain submissions made to theme committees, summaries thereof, the documents of core groups and reports from technical teams assigned to each theme committee. Audio recordings of the committee meetings can be found in their relevant sub-series.
Theme committees were responsible for the integration of ideas from political parties, civil society and the general public into the constitution-making process. Theme committees reported to the Constitutional Committee and Management Committee oversaw theme committee report writing. Their membership was drawn from the Constitutional Assembly.
Reports created by theme committees included details of non-contentious issues, contentious issues and suggested approaches but excluded debates, negotiations or resolutions which was the function of the Constitutional Committee and Constitutional Assembly.
Occasionally theme committee members were drawn on by the Constitutional Committee and Constitutional Sub-committee to draft and negotiate parts of the constitutional text as part of sub-committees and ad hoc committees.
Functions of the Theme Committees included:
- Receiving and collating views from the broader community on the Constitution
- Receiving submissions from the political parties
- Developing and processing these concepts and views
- Referring processed views for technical drafting
- Submitting the processed concepts in the form of reports to the Constitutional Committee for debate in the Constitutional Assembly.
There are six theme committees, each with their own dedicated topic. Theme Committee 6 was allowed by the Constitutional Assembly to create several sub-theme committees due to the significant differentiated and non-overlapping topics related to its theme.
The themes are:
- Theme Committee 1: Character of Democratic State
- Theme Committee 2: Structure of Government
- Theme Committee 3: Relationship Between Levels of Government
- Theme Committee 4: Fundamental Rights
- Theme Committee 5: Judiciary and Legal Systems
- Theme Committee 6: Specialised Structure of Government
- Sub-Theme Committee 6.1: Public Administration
- Sub-Theme Committee 6.2: Financial and Public Enterprise institutions
- Sub-Theme Committee 6.3: Transformation and Monitoring
- Sub-Theme Committee 6.4: Security apparatus
Each theme committee had a core group and a supporting technical committee. The core groups were responsible for co-ordinating and managing the work programmes of their respective theme committees. Technical committees were drawn from experts external to the Constitutional Assembly to advise theme committees.