The non-governmental organisation Praxis welcomes the fact that the Bill Amending the Law on Non-contentious Procedure has been recently sent to the parliamentary procedure. The adoption of this law will be a step forward towards resolving the problems of legally invisible persons - those who have not been registered into birth registry books and who are prevented from exercising their basic human rights granted by the Constitution and legislation of the Republic of Serbia.

Let us be reminded that after many years of continuous efforts invested by Praxis, the Center for Advanced Legal Studies and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, into resolving the problem of legally invisible persons in a systemic way, Praxis and the Center for Advanced Legal Studies, in cooperation with the Protector of Citizens, drafted a proposal of the Law Amending the Law on Non-contentious Procedure, which was adopted by the government last week. This law has ended up in the parliamentary procedure after numerous appeals of the civil sector, recommendations of international organisations, UN treaty bodies and the European Union, which persistently pointed to the necessity of solving the problems of legally invisible persons.

It has been estimated that around 6,500 of legally invisible persons, mostly Roma, live in Serbia and that due to administrative barriers, multi-generational social exclusion and poverty, war events and the absence of legal provisions that would recognise them as citizens of Serbia, they have not been able to exercise any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and ratified international instruments in the field of human rights.

The non-governmental organisation Praxis expects that the MPs of the National Assembly will recognise the seriousness of the problems faced by legally invisible persons and that the current composition of the National Assembly will adopt the Bill Amending the Law on Non-contentious Procedure, which will allow these persons to enjoy equal rights like all other citizens of Serbia.