Women who were unlawfully sterilised in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic between 1966 and 2012 will be allowed to apply to the Health Ministry for compensation until the end of next year, under a bill approved by the Senate yesterday that extends the deadline, which expired this year, by two years.
The extension of the deadline was proposed as a draft amendment to the law on public health insurance in the Chamber of Deputies, by former Justice Minister Helena Valkova (ANO) and Eva Decroix (ODS), who was appointed new Justice Minister earlier this week.
In 2004, the European Roma Rights Centre came forward with suspicions of forced sterilisations of mainly Roma women. Dozens of women then came forward to the ombudsman and some also turned to the courts.
Now victims can apply for compensation under the law from 2022. Women who were unlawfully sterilised between 1 July 1966 and 31 March 2012 without free decision or information about the consequences can receive a lump sum of CZK 300,000 under the compensation law. The initiators of the extension argued that the conditions for proving a claim have changed in the past three years.
The Health Ministry registered 2,088 claims for compensation up to the beginning of last December, although at the time the compensation law was passed its drafters estimated that around 400 women would make claims. The ministry has issued around 700 positive decisions, but rejected some claims and failed to decide on some within the legal two-month period.
Michael O’Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, previously addressed Czech senior officials with a request to extend the validity of the law on one-off compensation for persons who have been unlawfully sterilised. According to him, all victims should be able to effectively exercise their right to compensation.
