Belgrade had been the centre of her life activities, and before that she had been forced to leave her house in Đakovica. The court completely ignored the facts that F.G. used to be registered in the civil registry books of the Republic of Serbia and that she possessed a birth certificate and citizenship certificate, and that she could neither be blamed for the fact that the authorities did not keep the civil registry books nor bear the related consequences. In fact, by issuing such a decision, the court has shown a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of the procedure for determining the date and place of birth, since that procedure was not introduced into the legal system only to allow the registration into birth registry books and nothing else, but to be the first step in obtaining an ID card and exercising other rights. The Law on NonContentious Procedure was amended to include these provisions precisely because due to the lack of personal document several thousands of legally invisible persons were not able to exercise almost any of the guaranteed rights. The ultimate goal of these provisions was to fully resolve their status, i.e. to integrate these people into society. However, the court wrongly believes that the sole purpose of conducting this procedure is only the registration into birth registry books, while obtaining an ID card and exercising other rights are presented by the court as some sort of illegitimate interest and abuse of rights. In addition, in this decision the court refers to the petitioner as citizen of the "Republic of Kosovo", whose independence and statehood have not been recognised by the Republic of Serbia, and therefore its authorities certainly should not claim otherwise in their decisions. Unfortunately, the case of F.G. was not the only of its kind, and the same court issued several more decisions containing almost identical explanations, while three other courts also rejected or denied the petitions because the petitioners possessed documents issued in Kosovo after 1999 and/or because the court considered that the persons who had been registered in the civil registry books that were later destroyed or missing could not exercise their right in a noncontentious procedure. However, it should be noted that most courts in such cases acted properly and issued decisions granting petitions. Nevertheless, there were cases where the same court in the same situations issued different decisions. For example, four petitions for determining the date and place of birth of four siblings were filed before one court. In two cases, the court issued decisions denying the petitions, with the explanation almost identical to the explanation given in the case of F.G. However, the petitions were granted for one brother and one sister. This practice is unacceptable because the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to equal legal protection. In addition, these cases show that the practice of most courts was wrong, which was evident at the very beginning of the implementation of the Law on Amendments to the Law on Non-Contentious Procedure, when the courts in a large number of cases rejected to act upon petitions for determining the date and place of birth for more siblings or for mothers and their children at the same time. Conducting separate procedures for each relative have almost always resulted in prolonged procedures and increased costs for participants in these procedures, and it has turned out that opposite decisions can be issued in the identical factual and legal situations. As regards the problems of persons who used to be registered in birth registry books, we should mention the case of a Praxis’ beneficiary whose petition was denied by the firstinstance court over three years ago because “the petitioner stated in his petition the date of birth and the fact that it was registered in birth registry books”, after which the secondinstance court denied the appeal.6 Late last year the Supreme Court of Cassation granted a review and repealed the first-instance and second-instance decisions and remanded the case for reconsideration. 6 See more details about this case in: Praxis, Analysis of the Procedures for Determining the Date and Place of Birth and for the Exercise of Rights to Citizenship and Registration of Permanent Residence in 2015, p. 15. 5