Strengthening the Rights of Women and Children in Slovakia’s Healthcare

Author: Dimitar Keranov, Transatlantic Foundation

In Slovakia, access to healthcare by women and children can depend not only on what the law provides, but also on whether they know how to assert their rights and where to turn for help, and whether information is available in a language they understand. Through two consecutive PROTEUS-supported projects, the civil society organization Women’s Circles worked to close that gap by turning legal protections into practical tools for women, parents, and civic actors across the country.

The first project, Engaging Women in Self-Efficient Advocacy, ran from February 2024 to January 2025, and focused on helping women claim their rights in childbirth-related healthcare settings. The second, Stronger Voices for Women and Children: Promoting EU Values in Diverse Slovak Regions, implemented from July to December 2025, expanded this work to children’s healthcare and connected everyday experiences in hospitals to core EU values, including human dignity, non-discrimination, respect for family life, and the right to healthcare.

In both projects, Women’s Circles combined direct support, public education, and advocacy. It created and updated practical resources, including complaint templates, guidance on medical documentation, materials on informed consent, tools for parents whose children are hospitalized, and multilingual resources in Slovak, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and English. These materials helped women and families request records, file complaints, understand institutional procedures, and respond when their rights were not respected.

The impact was visible in the words of women who used the support. “Today, I sent the ‘most important mail’ of my life”, one woman wrote after filing complaints about a traumatic childbirth experience. “If it weren’t for your organization, I wouldn’t even know what I’m entitled to during the investigation, who to contact, and last but not least, that I have the strength for it.” Another participant described the Guide to Institutions–How to Seek Remedy workshop as “an enormously beneficial format” that is “certainly missing from the awareness of birthing women and birth companions.”

Accessibility was central to the projects. In the city of Dunajská Streda, workshops were conducted in Slovak and Hungarian to make sure of reaching the Hungarian minority. Women’s Circles also supported Ukrainian women and children through a dedicated Ukrainian-language Facebook presence, a webinar, and a practical guide to Slovakia’s healthcare system. “For us Ukrainians, this is a really difficult topic”, one webinar participant said. “We have a completely different system at home and here everything is new and incomprehensible. Such meetings really help us understand how it works here and feel a little more confident.”

The projects reached women and children through workshops and discussions in the cities of Košice, Dunajská Streda, Prešov, and Trenčín, as well as webinars on childbirth rights, children’s rights during hospitalization, informed consent, outpatient childbirth, and navigating the healthcare system. In Prešov, an educational meeting with Roma women used participatory methods to discuss dignity, respect, informed consent, non-discrimination, and children’s rights in healthcare. Participants created visual representations of their birth experiences and a collective vision of the maternity care they wished for all women. The shared conclusion was simple and powerful: “I am not alone in this.”

The projects also contributed to institutional accountability. In the first project, following a 2024 legal change establishing women’s right to choose an accompanying person during childbirth, Women’s Circles monitored hospital websites and found that many continued charging fees for the presence of birth companions.  Complaints to authorities led to positive responses in two regions, with one authority ordering hospitals to refund fees. In the second project, the organization continued monitoring, contacted regional authorities, published a report on fees as a barrier to realizing this right, and shared its findings with the Office of the Public Defender of Rights.

Individual cases show why this support matters. Women’s Circles assisted a Hungarian-speaking woman who had experienced rights violations during childbirth and faced major language and financial barriers, providing legal guidance in her native language and helping her request medical records. It also helped a mother whose child was born at home and to whom a registry office refused to issue a birth certificate. The birth certificate was eventually issued, and the Ministry of Interior later confirmed that the registry office had acted unlawfully. The organization turned this experience into public guidance that helped other parents respond to similar problems.

In the second project, Women’s Circles also supported a Hungarian-speaking family after the death of a mother during childbirth. The family faced language barriers in trying to understand official documents, communicate with authorities, participate in legal proceedings concerning the care of children, and seek accountability. “Knowing that we are not alone in this process gives us strength and reassurance”, the family wrote. “Women’s Circles stood by us not only professionally, but also with humanity and respect.”

Another person emphasized the importance of legal support that combines expertise with empathy. “Everything was explained to me clearly, with professionalism and at the same time with humanity and empathy”, she said after a consultation with Women’s Circles lawyer. “I felt support, understanding and a genuine effort to help.”

Partnerships were essential to the projects’ reach and sustainability. Women’s Circles worked with organizations including Iniciatíva žien Prešov, Terra Materna, MAMILA, Poradňa pre občianske a ľudské práva, Rodič ľavou zadnou, Trust Women, Materské centrum Srdiečko, Sme Spolu, ICKOSICE, and BP Advokáti. These partners helped organize events, disseminate materials, reach minority and refugee communities, strengthen legal analysis, and integrate project outputs into future training. MAMILA, for example, has used Women’s Circles’ educational video on informed consent in a continuing education course for lactation consultants.

By combining practical tools, multilingual outreach, direct legal guidance, consultations, emotional support, and sustained advocacy, Women’s Circles helped women and children transform legal rights into lived protections. The two projects strengthened a network of informed advocates across Slovakia and created resources that remain publicly available beyond the grant period. Their broader contribution is a model of civic action rooted in dignity, solidarity, and the belief that no woman or family should have to face the healthcare system alone.

The projects Engaging Women in Self-Efficient Advocacy and Stronger Voices for Women and Children: Promoting EU Values in Diverse Slovak Regions, supported by the Engaging Central Europe program of the Transatlantic Foundation, were implemented under the PROTEUS program and co-funded by the European Union.

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Transatlantic Foundation (TF) or the European Union (EU). Neither the EU nor TF can be held responsible for them.