Adalah Seeks to Compel National Insurance Institute to Issue Child Allowance and Child Support Benefits for Arab Children
On 13 March 2003, Adalah filed an appeal to the Haifa Regional Labor Court against the National Insurance Institute (NII), seeking to compel the NII to provide child allowance benefits and support payments to the children of a West Bank woman who has been living in Israel for the past seven years without any official status. Her children are Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Due to violence perpetrated against the woman by her husband, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, she divorced him in 2002 before a religious court. The court ordered that the woman be given sole custody of her two minor children, and that her ex-husband should pay NIS 1000 monthly as child support, in addition to his NII child allowance benefits. Since that time, the woman has not received any money from her ex-husband. The woman's identity must be protected due to threats against her life by her family and her ex-husband.
According to the Alimony and Child Support (Securing Payment) Law (1972) (hereafter "the Child Support Law"), persons who are the beneficiaries of court-ordered alimony or child support payments need not pursue their former spouses or partners in order to obtain the funds due to them. They can simply apply to the NII, which will pay them the funds that they are owed, and will use its own systems to obtain these funds from the non-paying former spouse or partner. One condition of the law is that the beneficiary must be a resident of Israel. The law does not provide a definition of the term "resident," but rather refers to the National Insurance Law (1995); however, this law also does not define the term.
The woman and her children are parties to a petition filed by Adalah to the Supreme Court of Israel in May 2002, seeking cancellation of the government's discriminatory decision to prevent family unification for non-citizen Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens. In August 2002, the Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction in this case, which allows the woman to remain in Israel, but prohibits her from working. Deprived of the payments ordered by the religious court, and unable to work, the woman and her children depend entirely on private charity for their subsistence.
In September 2002, the woman filed an application to the NII, requesting that it provide the unpaid child support and child allowance benefits owed by her ex-husband, according to the terms of the Child Support Law. A few weeks later, her application was returned by the NII without explanation. She went to the NII office, where she was told that her application was refused because she is not a resident of Israel. The woman re-submitted her application with further documentation in January 2003. This time the NII replied in writing, refusing to process her application because she does not satisfy the definition of "resident" under the Child Support Law.
In the appeal to the Haifa Regional Labour Court, Adalah Staff Attorney Orna Kohn argued that the term "resident" as employed in the Child Support Law should be interpreted to mean a person whose center of life is Israel, not necessarily a person who is officially acknowledged as a resident. Adalah stressed that the NII's decision contradicts prior court interpretations of the term "resident," with respect to other social security laws which employ the term without defining it. These interpretations have favored a broad interpretation of the term "resident," Adalah argued, in order to satisfy the spirit of the laws in which it is used.
Adalah argued that the NII's refusal to exercise its authority and provide needed benefits to the woman contradicts the Child Support Law, and violates the principle of rule of law. Further, Adalah argued, the decision violates the basic rights of the woman and her children, including their rights to dignity, minimum standards of living, and equality, as protected by the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992).
Additionally, Adalah argued that the NII's decision is a violation of international law, including Article 1 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention (1952), and Article 1 of the ILO Equality of Treatment (Social Security) Convention (1962). These conventions have been ratified by Israel. Further, the NII's decision violates Articles 10(1) and 10(3) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Article 24 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and Articles 2, 3(1), and 26 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Israel has also ratified these human rights treaties.
Finally, Adalah stressed in the appeal that the benefit payments ordered by the religious court are intended for the upkeep of the woman's children, who are citizens of Israel. Since the children inarguably meet the criteria of "resident" stipulated in the Child Support Law, discriminating against them on the basis of their mother's status constitutes further violations of the aforementioned Israeli and international laws.
No date has been set for the first hearing in the case.
