Prishtina, May 30, 2025 – The Ombudsperson has conducted ex officio investigations after receiving numerous complaints, mainly from the Serbian community, with complaints about the suspension of child allowance payments.

The complainants have announced that they received child allowances from September 2021 to December 2024. Meanwhile, in the period from August to December 2024, the Department of Social Schemes (DSS) of the Ministry of Finance, Labour and Transfers (MFLT) has requested beneficiaries to verify their documents for child allowances.

The complainants had acted according to the instructions of the DSS by submitting the documents through social work centers, and then also through the mail. Despite these actions, the payment of child allowance continued to remain suspended, not receiving any notifications or explanations regarding the matter.

Some beneficiaries from the Serbian community were asked to appear at the Kosovo Agency of Statistics to verify their residency status. This was done because the evidence they provided, such as certificates from the schools their children attend and vaccination records, is not recognized by the state system.

During the investigation of the case, the Ombudsperson requested from DSS officials to provide them with all copies of the decisions and instructions on which the work of this department was based, but until the preparation of this report, the Ombudsperson had not received these documents.

Such documents, such as the Decision of 31 October 2024, which provides for a document verification process, but does not specify additional documents, which were requested from citizens via e-mail, and other documents, were not found to be published.

The Ombudsperson has found that the actions of the MFLT may not have been intended to violate the rights of citizens, but the entire verification process in the first place was in violation of the principles of administrative procedure. And this has had a cascading effect on the violation of the principles of the rule of law, in particular of children of the Serbian community, putting them in an unequal and unfavorable position, which in fact constitutes discrimination on the basis of ethnicity.

In this letter, the Ombudspesron has recommended to the MFLT that without further delay, all decisions, instructions and conditions regarding the process of verifying the documentation of citizens benefiting from the child allowance be published in a clear and transparent manner, in both official languages.

Another recommendation concerns finding appropriate modalities for verifying the fulfillment of the criteria.

The Ombudspeson also recommends that any beneficiary whose child allowance payment has been suspended, after verification, be paid retroactively all outstanding payments.