The statistical data in Macedonia show that for several years in a row there is a tendency of declining natural population growth in the country, stagnating birth rate, increased death rate and tendency of rapid aging of the population. According to the statistics, the highly educated young people usually have one to two children, while those with lower education have several children.

In 2008, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia has developed a Strategy on Demographic Development of the Republic of Macedonia 2008 – 2015, where the first specific strategic objective is to fight against the reduced birth rate and to create conditions for sustainable demographic development of the country. With the amendment of the relevant legal provisions, each family, residing in the legally defined municipalities of Republic of Macedonia, which will increase the number of their children after January 1, will receive assistance from the state as part of the governmental program for preventing the negative trend of declining birth rate in Macedonia.

The parents that will get their second child after January 1, 2008 will receive a monthly allowance of 5,000 MKD for nine months, while 8,250 MKD will be given to the parents having a third child in the next ten years. The parents with fourth child will receive 11,500 MKD for 15 years. The parental benefit for the child will be given to the mother, while in exceptional cases to the father or the legal guardian of the child if they reside for at least three years in the municipality, where the natural population growth is under 2.1 pro mille.

One of the measures and interventions in the Strategy is to improve the system of financial assistance (paid maternal leave, allowance for each born child, child and special benefit) for encouraging the families to have more children. However, regardless of the mother’s salary, during the maternal leave she can receive up to 27,000 MKD. With this move, the state has discouraged the women that can afford to have more children from doing so, and unjustly and without arguments is harming the mothers with good financial standing.

In the past few years, piles of national strategies came into the Parliament – on European integration, approximation to NATO, poverty reduction, youth, information society, economic development, health, education…

The underlying issue is whether the Government of the Republic of Macedonia really has a strategy for fighting against the white plague or is this just another ad hoc measure that will be hardly implemented in practice.

From the very beginning we are witnessing numerous problems related to the accomplishment of this objective, such as financial (delayed payment) and legal (the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia has adopted a decision on initiating a procedure for assessing the constitutionality of Article 30-a and 30-b of the Law on Child Protection and a decision on initiating a procedure for assessing the constitutionality of Article 24-a of the Law on Health Insurance, particularly the part saying: “who resides in a municipality in which the natural population growth is under 2.1 live born children per woman, according to the data of the State Statistics Bureau of the Republic of Macedonia, released for the previous year”.

In the decision on initiating a procedure, the Constitutional Court states that the Articles 30-a and 30-b of the Law stipulate that only the mothers residing in the municipalities in which the natural population growth is under 2.1 are entitled to parental benefit, i.e. only a group of mothers within the defined municipal borders or according to the territorial principle are entitled to this right. These legal provisions do not apply to the whole territory of the Republic of Macedonia thus creating inequality and not providing protection for the motherhood and children.

The Helsinki Committee awaits the outcome of the initiated procedures before the Constitutional Court and warns that the legal amendments directly discriminate the mothers on the basis of the municipality in which they reside. In addition, there is evident gender discrimination as only the mother is entitled to this right, while the father is entitled only in exceptional cases.

Taking into consideration the list of municipalities that meet the requirements, one may get the feeling that there is also ethnic discrimination as there are only 2 municipalities on the list (Zajas and Oslomej) with predominantly Albanian population. It is true that the list of municipalities was compiled in accordance with the census of 2.1%, but it is still symptomatic that only two municipalities with over 90% of Albanians and few others with small percentage of Albanians have been on the list.

Documents:

  • Special Analysis

    Full analysis conducted by Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Macedonia (in English).