June 09, 2022

Victory for Croatian same-sex couples seeking adoption

topic:	LGBT Rights
located:	Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia
editor:	Katarina Panić

For the past six years, a same-sex couple in Croatia has been fighting a lengthy legal battle to adopt children. Finally, last month, a Croatian court put an end to this struggle by ruling in the two men’s favour. 

"Our search for equality is not over, but this is a huge step forward,” Daniel Martinović from Zagreb-based NGO Rainbow Families told local media. 

The youngest European Union member state passed the Life Partnership Act eight years ago, granting same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual ones - except for the right to adopt children. Soon after, Ivo Šegota and Mladen Kožić spearfronted the legal battle against the state to become parents. Two years ago, they succeeded in fostering children, but not in adopting them. Yet, they did not give up. 

Last year, the Zagreb-based Administrative Court ruled in their favour, defending their right to access the procedure for adoption assessment within the social care system. However, once again, the government did not agree with the ruling, so the Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family, and Social Policy appealed the verdict. Finally, on 26 May, the High Administrative Court rejected the Ministry's argument that same-sex couples should not approach the assessment for adoptive parents so as to "protect the interests of the child." The rejection of this appeal made the previous ruling final.

It is another historic moment for the LGBTQ community in Croatia. The verdict states that same-sex couples can approach the assessment for adoptive parents together and must not be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation. It dramatically changes the assessment system for adoptive parents, and opens the door to all same-sex couples who decide to have children through adoption.

The Croatian court referred to previous judgments by the European Court of Human Rights that guarantee the protection of family life for same-sex couples. In Albania, this year's Pride parade took place last month under the motto "We are family." In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Pride March will be held on 25 June under the theme "Family Gathering." It seems the LGBTQ community in the region has grown tired of explaining that homosexual orientation does not exclude family values, as both the conservatives and churches persistently claim.

Photo by Mercedes Mehling

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