From the subcommittee’s recommendation to payment of compensation

The issue of a subcommittee recommendation or decision is a staging-post, not in every case the end of the file. After it come ratification or objection, and payment becomes possible once the decision is fit to be carried out. This article orders that later stage, and is to be read with the pages on the steps and priority of payment. The payment date and paying body are read from Article 16 and from the National Pension Authority path where it applies.

First: what does the subcommittee issue?

In cases of martyrdom, disappearance, kidnapping, injury and Popular Mobilization wounded, the committee issues a compensation decision within a period not exceeding sixty days from the date a complete application is filed, under Article 6 after the First Amendment. This is a decision on the merits, of which the injured person or their family is notified, and from which the objection period is counted.

Property compensation, by contrast, takes the form of recommendations raised to the central committee within thirty days of their issue for ratification. After Law No. 2 of 2020, some property decisions — those whose amounts do not exceed the ceiling in Article 13 — are raised to the presidency of the governorate Court of Appeal for ratification, then referred to the Ministry of Finance for payment, and the committees must send a copy to the central committee for electronic archiving. The numerical ceiling is that set by Article 13 in the text in force. Until ratification is complete, the file is not treated as a decision ready for payment in a property case.

Among the safeguards added by the Second Amendment is placing recommendations and decisions before the public prosecutor for an opinion on whether they accord with the law, so as to safeguard public funds. That review is part of the soundness of the decision, not a substitute for notifying those with an interest.

Second: objection and then challenge, before a disputed payment

If the injured person, their family, the Ministry of Finance, the Martyrs Foundation, the National Pension Authority (Hay’at al-Taqa‘ud al-Wataniyya) or any person with an interest disputes a subcommittee decision or recommendation, an objection is brought before the central committee within sixty days from the day after the date of notification, and may rest on new documents, under Article 7(1) after the 2020 amendment. The central committee ratifies, amends or cancels after the challenge period has passed, in the cases the law provides for.

A person harmed by a central-committee decision challenges it before the Administrative Judiciary Court within thirty days from notification of the result of the decision, then before the Supreme Administrative Court within thirty days from notification of the judgment or from its being deemed notified, under Article 7(2) after Law No. 57 of 2015. Care is taken in counting “after thirty days”, and the challenge is filed early. Paying an amount that is still under a pending challenge may complicate recovery later; it should therefore be clarified whether enforcement is stayed or the decision has become final.

Third: the financial payment path through the governorate

Article 16 of Law No. 2 of 2020: the Ministry of Finance, through the governorate concerned, pays compensation amounts. For property: under subcommittee decisions ratified by the central committee or by the presidency of the governorate Court of Appeal. For martyrdom, disappearance, kidnapping or injury: under subcommittee decisions in coordination with the Directorate of Martyrs of Victims in the Martyrs Foundation. Priority of payment follows the date the decisions were issued, with priority for cases of martyrdom and their number. The Ministry must allocate the amounts in each governorate’s budget within the federal budget law each year.

Anyone who asks the subcommittee for payment as if it were a treasury, or asks the Foundation apart from this path, puts the request in the wrong place. Anyone following a payment position should keep a copy of the ratified decision and its date, and should approach the paying body in the governorate once the decision has become final. A shortfall in the allocation may delay payment in practice, without that delay alone being read as a cancellation of the right.

Fourth: the salary path through the National Pension Authority

Not every entitlement passes through the governorate treasury. Instructions No. 4 of 2018 arrange for compensation decisions to be sent from the subcommittees to the Directorate of Martyrs of Victims, then to the National Pension Authority under the electronic programme it has adopted, with the name, birth details, the legal inheritance deed, the death certificate and deeds of guardianship if there is a minor. The Authority completes the salary-payment file if the conditions are met. Ministries notify the Directorate of decisions issued by their committees for their personnel — except the compensation amount — so that the rights can be followed up. Grants paid from the rewards heading, under the Instructions, have their financial path described in Article 7 of the Instructions, and a distinction is drawn between an employee’s grant and a citizen’s grant through the Martyrs Foundation’s budget. The procedural details are in the article on the Instructions.

After payment, pension entitlements may be reassessed every five years at the Authority’s request under Article 8 of the Instructions, or upon a worsening application filed by the injured person. Those are later paths; they do not stay a final decision, and they may change what is paid later in the light of the new rating.

On every one of these paths, the date of each notification and each referral is kept. Without those dates it is hard to calculate the sixty days and the thirty days, and hard to prove which decision came first when payments compete. Once the decision has become enforceable, the body approached for payment is the one the text assigns to disbursement.

Legal basis and sources

1. Law No. 2 of 2020 — Articles 11, 13 and 16
2. Law No. 57 of 2015 — Articles 6 and 7
3. Instructions No. 4 of 2018 — Articles 1, 4, 7 and 8

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