CCPR/C/125/D/2498/2014 Annex Joint opinion of Committee members Marcia V.J. Kran and Yuval Shany (concurring) 1. We are in agreement with the Committee that the State party has failed to clearly indicate the kinds of special circumstances under which the child budget may be granted to individuals without a residence permit, and that it has not explained the steps the author could have taken and failed to take in order to substantiate her statelessness and inability to leave the Netherlands during the relevant period (para. 7.6). 2. This leads us to conclude that the eligibility criteria for the child budget (kindgebonden budget), including the exceptional circumstances under which non-eligible families would be entitled to receive the budget, were not set out in a clear, objective manner and were not applied to the author in a reasonable manner. Consequently, the actual exclusion of the author from eligibility to both regular and exceptional avenues for receipt of the child budget was based, in our view, on criteria that were neither reasonable nor objective, and that constituted a form of discrimination, contrary to articles 26 and 2 (1), read in conjunction with article 24, of the Covenant.1 3. At the same time, we have some doubts regarding what appears to be the Committee’s main conclusion: that the State party was required to allow the author to receive support from the child budget by virtue of article 24. While I share the position of the Committee that, under article 24 (1) of the Covenant, the State party had a positive obligation to ensure that Y’s physical and psychological well-being was protected, including through a guarantee of subsistence under circumstances where her mother had no access to work or other income (para. 7.8), we are of the view that the State has broad discretion in identifying the appropriate social security programme through which to implement this positive obligation. We further note that the State party claimed that neither general child benefits nor the child budget was a general income support scheme providing families with children with a minimum subsistence income payment (para. 4.8). 4. However, the State party has not identified what other social security measures were in place to address the needs and best interests of children facing acute poverty and destitution, which puts their physical and psychological well-being at real risk. 5. For these reasons, we would have based the Committee’s article 24 finding not on the specific refusal to afford the author support under the child budget programme, but rather on the State party’s failure to identify any social security programme that would evaluate and address the needs of the author’s minor child. We therefore propose to read paragraph 7.8 of the Committee’s Views relating to the separate violation of article 24 in that light. 1 12 The Committee recently examined two similar cases in which the application of domestic laws was found to be discriminatory, because the reasons for allowing some exceptions to a general norm, but not allowing other exceptions to the same norm, were not clearly explained or resulted in particularly harsh consequences. See Yaker v. France (CCPR/C/123/D/2747/2016), para. 8.15, in which it was noted that the State party provided no explanation why the blanket prohibition on the author’s veil was reasonable or justified, in contrast to the exceptions allowable under the act concerned, and Toussaint v. Canada (CCPR/C/123/D/2348/2014), para. 11.8, in which it was noted that, given that the exclusion of the author from the care programme concerned could result in the author’s loss of life or irreversible, negative consequences for the author’s health, the distinction drawn by the State party for the purpose of admission to the programme between those with legal status in the country and those who had not been fully admitted to Canada was not based on a reasonable and objective criterion.