After the proposal of the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Financial Support for Families with Children, following an accelerated procedure, was put on the agenda of the second extraordinary session of the National Assembly, the Autonomous Women's Center appealed to all MPs to adopt a new article of the law that would provide for child allowance for children whose mothers are victims of femicide.

The Autonomous Women's Center sent this proposal to the Ministry of Family Care and Demography during the public debate on amendments to the Law on Financial Support for Families with Children, but the Ministry rejected all the proposals of the Autonomous Women's Center, including this one.

The reason for submitting this appeal is the fact that relatives who take care of minor children whose mothers have been killed face a large number of challenges and problems, often without any psychological or material support from the state. Material reasons, unfortunately, are often the ones that are decisive when relatives make this type of decision, because by accepting to be caregivers to minor children, they often bring their own children to the edge of existence. Relatives are not granted foster care in those situations, and receiving child allowance according to the currently valid provisions puts them in an unfavorable situation due to the census of the average monthly income per family member, which in November 2023 was 15,103.20 dinars, so their requests for exercising the right to child allowance are being rejected.

As with the placement of children in foster families on other grounds, in these situations too, children of murdered women who live in a relatives’ family that can partially replace their sense of security are discriminated against as beneficiaries of the right to child allowance and other benefits compared to children who are placed with unfamiliar people and in an unfamiliar environment, in foster families.

Therefore, the Autonomous Women's Center believes that the minimum that the state can do for the children of murdered women is to provide them with the right to child allowance and increased child support that will not depend on the financial conditions of the relatives who take care of them.

You can read the Appeal HERE.