Praxis sent an appeal to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government to undertake measures within its jurisdiction to remove legal obstacles that prevent birth registration immediately after birth in case of children whose mothers do not possess personal documents.

Various international organizations and treaty bodies have also pointed to this problem in Serbia. Within the Third Cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) concerning Serbia, the UN Human Rights Council gave, among others, a recommendation to the Republic of Serbia to ensure that all children born in Serbia have access to timely birth registration immediately after birth, without discrimination and regardless of the legal or documentation status of their parents.

Apart from the UN Human Rights Council, other international organizations and treaty bodies have also drawn attention to this problem (Concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in relation to the combined second and third periodic review of the Republic of Serbia; 2018 Report on Serbia by the European Commission). Furthermore, Serbia has committed to implement UN Sustainable Development Goals, one of them (SDG 16.9) being to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.

The fact that the situation in Serbia concerning access to right to birth registration is not satisfactory has also been emphasised in the Statelessness Index, which gives an overview of how different countries in Europe protect stateless persons and what they do in order to prevent and reduce statelessness. Even though Serbia received good review in relation to some aspects, the review was poor in relation to exercise of the right to timely birth registration of children in the birth registry books and in relation to prevention of statelessness of persons born in Serbia.

Apart from the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Praxis also appealed to the Ombudsperson to contribute to removing the stated legal obstacles within its scope of authority.

For more information, see the announcement. 

National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Amendments to the Law on Registry Books on 20 June 2018. The new law will enter into force on 1 January 2019. 

On this occasion, an opportunity was missed to resolve the problem of birth registration of children whose mothers do not possess personal documents. Specifically, two by-laws that regulate the procedure of birth notification and registration in the birth registry book contain provisions that prevent registration of all data on the new-born children immediately after birth, including children’s names, if their mothers do not possess personal documents.

This actually means that these children will not have a birth certificate in the most vulnerable part of their lives and, consequently, they will be left without the possibility to exercise rights to health care or social protection. In Serbia, this problem almost exclusively affects members of Roma ethnic minority and only further aggravates their already difficult position.

During the public debate on the draft law, Praxis requested that a provision be included in the law that would oblige the registrars to register a child in the birth registry regardless of whether child's parents possess personal documents. Unfortunately, this suggestion was not accepted.

For more information, see the announcement.

The Third Meeting of the National Working Group (NWG) on Public Administration Reform (PAR) in Serbia, was held on 13 June in Belgrade attended by the representatives of the SIGMA/OECD, who presented the results of SIGMA 2017 Assessment for Serbia during the first part of the meeting.

On that occasion, Jasmina Mikovic presented the main findings of the research on transparency of the local self-government and implementation of the new Law on General Administrative Procedure, which Praxis conducted within the project Contributing to Public Administration Reform in Kraljevo. She also emphasized the importance of respecting and applying human rights principles in the creation of local policies, with particular reference to the importance of the participation of all groups in society, including children, women, minorities and certain vulnerable groups in decision making, so that the local self-government is ready to respond to the needs of vulnerable social groups. Thereby, it is necessary to constantly take care of preserving the non-discrimination principle in all local policies, and particularly when making decisions and providing services.  

For more information, see the announcement.

As of 3 April 2018, persons who do not possess the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia but have the citizenship of one of the former republics of the SFRY or SFRY citizenship will have the opportunity to be admitted to the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia under simplified conditions.  The condition prescribed for admission to citizenship (naturalisation) is that the applicant had the permanent residence registered in the territory of Serbia both on 31 December 2016 and at the time of submitting an application. The application deadline is 3 April 2019.

This option was provided by the Law on Amendments to the Law on Citizenship of the Republic of Serbia to ensure easier access to the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia for persons who have had permanent residence and ID cards issued in Serbia for many years, most often even for many decades.  These are mainly elderly people who upon expiry of their old ID cards realised that their ID cards were not permanently valid, and that due to not having the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia they were unable to obtain biometric ID cards.
  
Besides, the Law stipulates that the records on the citizens of the Republic of Serbia will be established in the electronic format at the latest by 30 June 2018, and that it will be possible to issue citizenship certificates to citizens regardless of where the fact of citizenship was recorded in the relevant registries. 

On this year’s International Roma Day, celebrated all over the world on 8 April, the Roma in Serbia continue to be one of the most marginalised and discriminated social groups. Low educational level, unemployment, inadequate living conditions, difficult financial situation, hindered access to personal documents, health care and social welfare remain to be the challenges often faced by the Roma in Serbia. 

Despite some progress achieved over the past several years in the field of exercising and protecting certain rights, Roma continue to face obstacles that hinder or completely prevent their access to certain rights on a daily basis. Thus, there are still children who cannot be registered at birth due to inadequate regulations and who therefore remain excluded from the system of health care and social welfare in the most vulnerable period of their lives. The situation of Roma children is particularly worrying because they are at a much higher risk of early dropout and/or becoming victims of child, early and forced marriages. Social exclusion, discrimination, segregation, intolerance and prejudice are negative phenomena that are too often associated with the Roma community.

A society in which one of the largest national minorities lives in the situation that is by far worse than the situation of the majority population can in no case be considered successful. Therefore, Praxis urges all institutions to pay more attention to the numerous problems faced by Roma, and to invest more efforts to change inadequate regulations and eradicate poor practices and discrimination because otherwise the situation of Roma cannot be improved.

On 29 March 2018, Praxis held a conference to present the results of the project Contributing to Public Administration Reform in Kraljevo, within the framework of the Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform (WeBER), financed by the European Union and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The conference was attended by representatives of local administrative bodies, civil society organisations and the media. 

Marija Dražović from Praxis presented the project activities implemented in the period 1 June 2017 - 31 March 2018 and aimed at achieving the transparency of data on public administration reform at the local level, improving the service role of local administrative bodies and public awareness about it, improving the mechanisms of cooperation of the local self-government with citizens and civil society organisations and contributing to better embed the principles of public administration in local decisions and manner of providing services.

For more information, see the announcement here.

The report Contributing to Public Administration Reform in Kraljevo  was prepared as the result of the research conducted by Praxis within the project "Contributing to public administration reform in Kraljevo" in the period from 1 June 2017 - 31 March 2018, as part of  the project Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform (WeBER), financed by the European Union and co-financed by the Kingdom of Netherlands.

Based on the conducted research of the transparency of local self-government and the efficiency of local administrative bodies in Kraljevo, as well as monitoring of the application of the Law on General Administrative Procedure, Praxis has established that there is a significant  space for improving the work of local administrative bodies in all areas. 

Download the report here.

Ivanka Kostic, Praxis Executive Director, took part in the Expert meeting on Improving access to Civil Registration and Identity Documents for Roma in Ukraine that was organized by ODIHR in co-operation with the State Migration Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representation in Ukraine.

Ivanka presented Serbia’s significant improvements relating to birth registration, statelessness, residence registration and access to identity documents following 10 years of intensive advocacy by Praxis, UNHCR and other CSOs and international agencies. She also shared Praxis’ experience in its active participation in the Technical Working Group (established by the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-government, UNHCR and the Ombudsperson institution) and its close cooperation with the relevant government institutions in the Technical Working Group on individual cases, but also on problems and gaps in the implementation of the newly adopted regulations. Through the Technical Working Group, Praxis also advocated for changes and documented the remaining systemic gap relating to birth registration of children of undocumented parents, immediately after birth. 

The expert meeting built on the recommendations of the 2017 Odessa Declaration, developed to overcome obstacles in access to civil registration and identity documents by Roma in Ukraine. The participants discussed the possibility of establishing a joint technical working group of state and non-state stakeholders to co-ordinate efforts in addressing the issue.

The participants expressed their belief that the meeting was a significant step towards addressing the lack of personal documents among Roma in Ukraine.

After one year, administrative procedures of subsequent birth registration for three children have finally been solved in their favour before the Registry Office in Kraljevo. 

Due to unlawful conduct and non-compliance with the rules of procedure, the competent authority unjustifiably rejected the requests three times, which is why the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government adopted complaints and returned the cases for repeated procedure each time. Among other things, the competent authority rejected the requests considering them contrary to the Constitution because the submitted documents were not written in Cyrillic but in Latin script. It also considered that the Praxis’ activities of informing and advising the party were unconstitutional. The competent authority has failed to take care that illiteracy and ignorance of the party to the procedure should not prejudice the rights to which the party is entitled, which is an obligation of the authority conducting the administrative procedure that must be fulfilled ex officio. On the contrary, the authority abused its position and powers and used the illiteracy and ignorance of the submitter of request to her detriment, preventing her from exercising her statutory rights.

Thus, the competent authority has repeatedly requested from the submitter of request, a Roma woman who cannot speak Serbian, to provide the services of an interpreter, although the authority conducting the procedure has that obligation pursuant to the Law on the Official Use of Languages and Scripts. Considering that the Registry Office in Kraljevo had committed discrimination, denying the submitter of request the participation in the procedure due to lack of knowledge of the language, Praxis filed a complaint with the Commissioner for Protection of Equality, and the decision is pending.

After initiating a procedure for determining discrimination, requests for birth registration of three children were granted. It is paradoxical that this was done on the basis of the same evidence and statements of the same witnesses submitted at the time of the initiation of procedure.

The Registry Office in Kraljevo did not apply the statutory measures to facilitate the participation of members of vulnerable groups in the procedure, but by ignoring these affirmative measures, rendered their position and participation in the procedure even more difficult. Particularly disconcerting is the fact that such conduct occurred in the case where this authority was deciding on the children’s right to be recognised as persons before the law, which is completely contrary to the basic principle that everyone must be guided by the best interests of the child.