The Czech Health Ministry is asking the government for money to pay compensation for illegal sterilizations. So far, the ministry has accepted the requests of more than 900 women, including 200 this year, according to CTK.
By the end of last year, when the deadline for submitting applications was originally due to expire, the ministry had paid out over CZK 210 million. However, the office expects the deadline to be extended by two years.
Women who were unlawfully sterilised between 1 July 1966 and 31 March 2012 without a free decision and information about the consequences can receive a lump sum of CZK 300,000 under the compensation law. These are mostly Roma women.
“At present, more than 900 applicants have been granted the lump sum and about 570 more are waiting for their applications to be processed,” according to the ministry. This year, the Ministry of Health has granted compensation to about 200 women.
NGOs, the ombudsman and the Council of Europe have called for an extension of the deadline. An amendment extending the original deadline from three to five years was approved by the Chamber of Deputies at the end of April. It now awaits consideration by the Senate and the President’s signature.
“The Ministry of Health thus assumes in its estimate that at least 1,000 more applications will be successful, creating an obligation for the state to pay out funds totalling CZK 300 million through the Ministry of Health,” the document says. Any money for 2026 will be dealt with at a later date, according to the authority.
At the time the law was passed, experts estimated that it would affect about 400 women. According to information from earlier this year, 2,266 applications had been registered. The Ministry of Health processed 1,552 of them, 720 positively; 576 were rejected and 256 proceedings were stopped. In several cases, women sought recognition through the courts, and the Health Ministry had to adjust its decision-making practices.
Systematic sterilisation of women, i.e. the surgical removal of the uterus, most often during childbirth by caesarean section, was introduced in Czechoslovakia by a ministry directive of 1971. In 1979, the state also provided financial incentives for women. The last recorded case of illegal sterilisation was in 2007. In 2004, the European Roma Rights Centre came forward with suspicions of forced sterilisations of mainly Roma women.
Roma and human rights organisations have repeatedly complained about the failure of the Ministry of Health to comply with the legal processing time as well as the non-recognition of evidence other than medical documentation. The same criticism has been levelled by the ombudsman.
