No. 07-00-188/2015-02 date: 9 July 2015

OPINION

The opinion was issued in the procedure following a complaint filed by S. R. from N. against the Directorate for Children, Social and Primary Health Care of the city of N. In the course of the procedure was determined that S. R. submitted a request to the Directorate for Children, Social and Primary Health Care of the city of N. to exercise the right to one-off financial aid as an unemployed new mother. However, her request was rejected with an explanation that she does not meet all the conditions for exercising the right to financial compensation, that is, that she did not have place of residence on the territory of the city of N. at least one year before the date of the birth of her child. The Decision on the financial support to a family with children on the territory of the city of N. prescribes that the right to one-off financial aid of an unemployed new mother may be exercised by any unemployed new mother who has had temporary, that is, permanent residence on the territory of the city of N. at least one year before childbirth, if she is a refugee or a displaced person from the territory of Kosovo and Metohija. The right to one-off financial aid of an unemployed new mother may also be exercised by the child’s father, provided that the new mother is not alive, or that she abandoned the child. Considering that the Directorate for Children, Social and Primary Health Care in the city of N. in this specific case acted completely in accordance with the Decision on the financial support to a family with children on the territory of the city of N., which it is obliged to adhere to, and since the Assembly of the City of N. adopted this act, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality issued an opinion that the Directorate for Children, Social and Primary Health Care, against whom the complaint was filed, did not violate the Law on the Prohibition of Discrimination by not granting the right to S. R. to the one-off financial aid as an unemployed new mother. In compliance with her legal powers, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality  analysed conditions prescribed by the Decision on the financial support to a family with children on the territory of the city of N. adopted by the Assembly of the city of N, based on which she determined that the condition for exercising the right to the one-off financial aid by the unemployed new mother, which refers exclusively to the mother’s place of residence, has no objective and reasonable justification, since the setting out of this condition, without taking into account the place of residence of the child’s father and the child itself, is not justified either from the aspect of the purpose or from the aspect of the consequences it creates. Accordingly, an appropriate recommendation was issued to the Assembly of the city of N.