ZAGREB, 16 April 2022 - Ombudsman for Persons with Disabilities Anka Slonjšak has warned that in 2021 there was a rising number of incidents in which children with disabilities were exposed to discriminatory speech and that some of those cases that outraged the public, criminal proceedings were launched.

"We have warned about the cases of hate and prejudicial speech," Slonjšak said in her annual report.

In one of those cases, a child with autistic spectrum disorder was told to leave a patisserie in the town of Samobor with the explanation that "such children belong to the woods". In another case, a mother and her daughter with Down Syndrome had to leave a cafe in Zadar as they "are damaging the reputation of the cafe."

Some incidents of this kind have been the reason to press charges against bullies whose behaviour outraged the public.

The Office of Ombudsman for Persons with Disabilities monitors and promotes the rights of over 612,000 persons with disabilities, including 30,000 students with developmental disorders.

In 2021, a number of complaints lodged with the Office increased by a fifth compared to 2020.

Most complaints referred to the conduct of social welfare (502), while 329 referred to difficulties in employment and on the labour market, and 280 concerned access and mobility.

COVID takes lives of 2,500 disabled persons

During the COVID pandemic almost 110,000 of them caught coronavirus, according to the statistics kept until 9 March 2022, and approximately 2,500 died from the infection, while in Croatia so far about this infection has taken over 16,000 lives. 

The pandemic has led to the degradation of the rights of disabled citizens, the Ombudsman warns.

ZAGREB, 5 Nov 2021 - Human Rights Ombudswoman Tena Šimonović Einwalter believes that it is essential that the new Social Welfare Act establish a good welfare system and make entitlements and services available to everyone, including people living in rural areas and on the islands.

"It is essential to establish a well-organised welfare system, with appropriate capacities, and entitlements and services have to be available to everyone, including people living in rural and isolated areas and on the islands. Allowances should ensure a significant decrease in poverty or facilitate coming out of poverty, while the reform should focus on citizens who are beneficiaries of the social welfare system," Šimonović Einwalter says in her comments on the social welfare bill.

She welcomes the positive changes which include a guaranteed minimum allowance, accommodation and home help for all beneficiaries of welfare assistance. She also welcomes the increased penalties for anyone providing services for the elderly who have violated the law.

Necessary to be precise with legal provisions

Šimonović Einwalter says that it is important for legal provisions to be as precise as possible so that in practice they are interpreted correctly and equally.

"It is necessary to list welfare entitlements to ensure legal security, but also so they are visible, particularly to beneficiaries in the system," she says.

She believes that the bill needs to significantly relieve employees at welfare centres and decrease the number of  their public powers, particularly for those who are not directly tied to the welfare system.

She says that centres currently have 145 powers that are not sufficiently directed to the needs of beneficiaries. "Relieving them would ensure timely and quality protection for beneficiaries with regard to preventing the tragedies that we have unfortunately witnessed," she said.

Šimonović Einwalter lists a series of proposals to improve the bill.

 "Considering the novelty the bill brings related to establishing a social welfare institute, it is particularly important to investigate the possible effects of centralising the system and changing the status of welfare centres, as well as to hold additional consultations on these proposals," she says.

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AGREB, 28 June 2021 - The 19th Equal Opportunities Festival began on Monday in Zagreb's main downtown square and it will continue for the next three days (until 30 June), presenting what people with disabilities can contribute to their city.

The Equal Opportunities Festival features music and theatre performances as well as art exhibitions and educational-recreational and sports activities involving people with disabilities who will present their creative possibilities to show that they should enjoy the same rights and obligations as other citizens, the organisers said.

This year about 800 performers from Croatia and abroad, 500 of whom are people with disabilities, will participate in the street festival. They will be assisted by about 20 professionals and 150 student volunteers from about 15 Zagreb faculties, the festival's creator, Milan Ožegović, said while opening the festival in Ban Jelačić Square.

Ožegović said that the festival emerged as a result of efforts to enable people with disabilities to socialise and show their creativity to other citizens. Each year about 15,000 people visit the festival and that way prejudices are removed and awareness is raised of the abilities of people with disabilities. "We have managed to establish a public scene despite not receiving any systematic financial assistance," he added.

As a sign of support, Ombudsman for Persons with Disabilities Anka Slonjšak attended the opening of the 19th Equal Opportunities Festival.

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ZAGREB, 16 March, 2021 - In her report on 2020, Public Ombudswoman Lora Vidović warns that her recommendations are less and less complied with, which, she believes, can also be attributed to the fact that the parliament has still not discussed her reports for 2018 and 2019, a fact that has a number of long-term repercussions.

"An analysis of the government's opinion on the report for 2019 shows that the competent bodies acted or act in only 20% of the recommendations, which is less also in relation to the report for 2015 (29%), which the parliament did not adopt," says Vidović, whose eight-year term expired on 1 March. She did not apply for re-election.

"Especially worrying is the government's failure to respond to as many as 60% of the recommendations," says Vidović, who in her report for 2020 gave as many as 142 recommendations for stronger human rights protection in almost all areas of life, addressing them mostly to the competent ministries.

She also says that the Office for Human and Ethnic Minority Rights, as the body in charge of reporting on the implementation of the public ombudsman's reports, has not done so since her report for 2013.

"The absence of parliamentary debate evidently has a number of long-term repercussions that do not contribute to better human rights protection," says Vidović, noting that the Ministry of the Interior is still denying her office direct access to data on the treatment of irregular migrants in its computer system.

Most complaints refer to health system

The Office of the Public Ombudswoman, which in 2020 had 53 employees, acted in close to 5,000 cases, of which slightly over 2,900 were new ones, an increase of 16% from 2019.

This was mostly due to the coronavirus pandemic and earthquakes which have strongly affected human rights in Croatia, Vidović says, noting that just as in 2019, most of the complaints last year referred to the health system (328). For the first time, among the five most frequent types of complaints, with an increase of 49%, were public utilities.

Around 10% of all the new cases referred to the coronavirus epidemic and the number of such complaints would have probably been much higher had the office of the public ombudswoman not been damaged in the 22 March 2020 earthquake, which prevented it from receiving complaints regularly in the first months of the epidemic.  

The epidemic has strongly affected both patients and health workers, who have taken the brunt of the health crisis, Vidović says.

As regards patients, according to data from the Croatian Health Insurance Fund (HZZO), in the first ten months of 2020 the number of visits to family doctors dropped by 21.5% compared to 2019, the number of visits by pre-school children dropped by 22.6%, and of those by women by 20.7%. At the same time, the number of services for which physical contact is not necessary rose by one-third.

Members of the public complained to the ombudswoman about having to wait in lines outside health clinics, having to speak about their health problems and family circumstances without any privacy and about being examined through the window of their family doctor's office.

Waiting lists for specialist examinations have not grown smaller and for certain types of examinations they have grown longer. The epidemic and the mobilisation of the health system in March and April, when only medical emergencies and COVID-19 cases were dealt with, caused a new disruption because a large number of examinations, diagnostic procedures and surgeries were cancelled or postponed until further notice, says Vidović.

According to HZZO data, the number of appointments for first-time specialist examinations dropped significantly in 2020 (from 129,356 in 2019 to 55,007), as did the number of follow-up appointments (280,599 as against 515,590 in 2019). The Health Ministry established a call centre to redirect patients to other hospitals in Zagreb but aside from that measure, the plans are not known as to how to provide citizens, within a reasonable time, with all medical services, says Vidović.

She also notes that Croatia has a shortage of family medicine teams (-121), pediatric health care teams (-52, mostly in Zagreb), dental medicine teams (-205) and gynecology teams (-58).

More than 270 decisions by national COVID-19 response team

Vidović also comments on decisions made by the national COVID-19 response team, saying that "its initial, as well as most of its subsequent decisions restricted basic rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and international documents, from freedom of movement and assembly to the right to privacy." She describes as particularly worrying the ban on or restriction of private gatherings.

She notes that the granting of permits to leave one's place of residence was uneven, and in some cases "some members of a household obtained them while other members of the same household were denied those permits without any explanation."

The permits also obstructed access to public services for residents of rural areas and islands, while the cancellation of public transport made health and social services in remote areas less available, notably for elderly people.

Citizens' having problem getting around the new circumstances was also due to the large number of decisions made by the national team, 271 by 13 January 2021.

Lack of timely and verified information

In her report for 2020, Vidović also comments on the Zagreb earthquake, noting that media and social networks showed that citizens did not receive timely and verified information on the competent institutions and available help, with the situation having been additionally complicated by epidemiological restrictions and restriction of movement. Public disputes about the way of financing post-earthquake reconstruction between the City of Zagreb and the competent ministry and objections that independent experts were not sufficiently consulted in the decision-making process have deepened mistrust of state institutions, she says.

She notes that "many citizens still do not know what to do and how to exercise their rights, and their mistrust of state institutions and the system is great."

By 18 January 2021, 202 applications were submitted regarding the exercise of legal rights related to reconstruction, she says, repeating that it is necessary to form mobile teams consisting of staff from the Construction Ministry and/or the City of Zagreb to advise citizens on the ground, free of charge, about their rights and help them write their applications.

The direct damage from the quake has been estimated at more than HRK 86 billion, and it is evident that reconstruction process will be long, complex and financially demanding, Vidović says in her report for 2020.

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ZAGREB, 10 March, 2021 - The Croatian parliament on Wednesday discussed a proposal by the Committee on the Constitution, Standing Orders and Political System to nominate attorney and judge Sandra Hančić and Deputy Public Ombudswoman Tena Šimonović Einwalter for the post of Public Ombudsman.

Several opposition party groups expressed dissatisfaction that Public Ombudswoman Lora Vidović's reports for 2018 and 2019 had still not been discussed.

Nino Raspudić of the Bridge party warned about what he called a huge increase in the budget of the ombudswoman's office, saying it had doubled since 2008, as well as about an increase in the number of staff.

He proposed reducing the term of the public ombudsman from eight to five years and that the official should be elected by a two-thirds majority in the parliament.

That way one would not elect a para-political person, said Raspudić, adding that outgoing Public Ombudswoman Lora Vidović had not dealt with issues she should have dealt with and that she made her views clear when she opposed the 2013 referendum on marriage as a union of man and woman.

Dalija Orešković (Centar, GLAS) warned about growing social inequality and what she described as the shameful treatment of the office of public ombudswoman, whose reports for 2018 and 2019 had still not been discussed by the parliament. The Public Ombudswoman has protected public interest and not the interests of the HDZ, Orešković said, accusing the ruling party of destroying the country and causing its people to emigrate.

She dismissed Raspudić's claim that Vidović was a para-political figure.

The declining number of applications for the post shows that candidates do not see any prospects there, she said.

Ružica Vukovac of the Homeland Movement warned that MPs were only given short biographies of the candidates, who were not presented in the parliament.

Vesna Nađ (SDP) said that her party preferred Šimonović Einwalter, noting that it was not good that the public ombudswoman's reports for 2018 and 2019 had not been discussed.

Damir Habijan of the HDZ said the office of the public ombudsman was undoubtedly important and that the candidates had answered all questions put to them by two parliamentary committees.

The public ombudsman is expected to advocate and protect the rights and freedoms defined by the Constitution and international treaties, and the HDZ will make a decision on which candidate to support when the vote is taken, he said.

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ZAGREB, 10 March, 2021 - Following a recent ruling by the EU Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case Jurčić vs Croatia, Gender Equality Ombudsman Višnja Ljubičić on Wednesday warned about discriminatory practices targeting pregnant women and called for their fair treatment.

Ljubičić told a press conference that according to the ECHR ruling in the said case established that the Croatian Health Insurance Institute (HZZO) violated the pregnant woman's rights.

The ECHR ruling, she underlined, was delivered after all judicial instances in Croatia had ruled that the HZZO had acted correctly.

Presenting a chronology of the case, Ljubičić noted that in 2009 Jurčić underwent an in vitro fertilisation procedure after that she concluded an employment contract. Ten days later she discovered that she was pregnant. HZZO was to have approved sick pay during the pregnancy and maternity allowance, but decided that the hiring contract was fraudulent and that it had been concluded only so the beneficiary could receive those allowances.

Ljubičić claimed that Jurčić was discriminated against because she lost the right to receive any of these allowances while at the same time she could not receive unemployment benefits because she was in fact employed.

"We informed HZZO that it cannot act in this way and adopt decisions of its own accord because a an employment contract had been concluded between an employer and employee," she said.

Ljubičić added that the Health Ministry was warned in 2013 that Jurčić planned to send her application to the Strasbourg-based court, while in the meantime the Constitutional Court assessed that HZZO had not discriminated against Jurčić.

Ljubičić underscored that by reporting on that ruling she wanted to motivate institutions to a just treatment of pregnant women because her office was receiving complaints from them of their rights being denied.

Prior to that working contract Jurčić had been employed for 14 years with another employer, Ljubičić explained.

The ECHR ruling, delivered on 4 February this year, says that Jurčić was discriminated against and that several legal acts had been violated.

"Turning to the applicant’s case, the Court notes the authorities’ conclusion that the applicant had been unfit to work on the date of concluding her employment contract because her doctor had recommended her rest following her in vitro fertilisation ten days before. In particular, the authorities relied on the fact that the applicant was expected to work at the employer’s headquarters over 350 km away from her place of residence and that travel in her condition might reduce her chances of a favourable outcome of the fertilisation (see paragraphs 16 and 19 above). In that connection, the Court considers that, as a matter of principle, even where the availability of an employee is a precondition for the proper performance of an employment contract, the protection afforded to a woman during pregnancy cannot be dependent on whether her presence at work during maternity is essential for the proper functioning of her employer or by the fact that she is temporarily prevented from performing the work for which she has been hired. Moreover, the Court is of the view that introducing maternity protection measures is essential in order to uphold the principle of equal treatment of men and women in employment," says the EU court.

The ECHR also "notes that, in deciding the applicant’s case, the domestic authorities limited themselves to concluding that, due to the in vitro fertilisation, she had been medically unfit to take up the employment in question thereby implying that she had to refrain from doing so until her pregnancy was confirmed. The Court observes that this conclusion was in direct contravention to both domestic and international law."

In the ruling Jurčić was awarded €7,500 in damages which the Republic of Croatia is obliged to pay.

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ZAGREB, Sept 14, 2020 - PM Andrej Plenkovic has said that he does not understand the children's ombudsman's statement that religious content being practiced outside Religious Education in some schools is unacceptable, noting that complete absence of any religious content would be odd for a country with so many Catholics.

"As far as content at school events is concerned, I think we live in a free country and that it would be truly unusual in a country with so many faithful, so many Catholics, not to have any religious content anywhere," Plenkovic told the press during a visit to Mostar on Monday.

He was referring to a statement by ombudsman Helenca Pirnat-Dragicevic, who commented on religious content outside Religious Education classes in elementary schools in an interview with Hina.

Pirnat-Dragicevic said that her office "sees a problem in religious content being practiced often in some schools even outside Religious Education classes, for example at school events," adding that she considers this to be unacceptable.

Plenkovic said he did not see what would be achieved with that, noting that religion was part of the Croatian tradition and identity.

"I truly do not see how such content could be eliminated from some plays. I do not understand the statement," said Plenkovic.

The ombudsman for children also commented on problems regarding the organization of Religious Education classes in elementary schools with coronavirus restrictions in force, which recommend that classes not be mixed, which results in some children, who are not enrolled in Religious Education classes, having to attend those classes even though they do not participate in them.

"We consider that Religious Education, just like any other elective subject, should be held at the start or end of the day and we recommend introducing an alternative elective subject for children who do not attend Religious Education classes, similar to the practice in secondary schools, which have ethics as the alternative subject," said Pirnat-Dragicevic.

In a comment on this, Plenkovic said that as far as school schedules are concerned, he believes that each school is making pragmatic decisions that are to the benefit of pupils.

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