Serbia's Social Card — A World Bank-Backed Welfare Algorithm That Excluded a Third of Recipients

Serbia's Social Card (Socijalna karta) is a World Bank-backed digital registry and scoring system that has determined eligibility for social assistance nationwide since its 2022 rollout. It was designed to make welfare targeting fairer and more transparent by automatically cross-referencing applicants' data across government registers.
In practice, Amnesty International's 2023 report 'Trapped by Automation' found the opaque, error-prone system has disproportionately cut off Roma people and people with disabilities, often over minor or misclassified income — in one documented case, a one-off €170 funeral-expense donation from a human rights organisation was counted as income and disqualified the recipient, Mirjana, from further support.
The A11 Initiative for Economic and Social Rights found that, three years into implementation, almost one in three financially disadvantaged people had been left without social assistance as of March 2025 — evidence that the exclusions are systemic rather than isolated errors.
Affected applicants have 15 days to appeal a removal and must then wait three months before reapplying, a process critics say offers little real redress. The World Bank has promoted similar registry-based eligibility models in Jordan, Lebanon, Haiti, Nigeria, Morocco, Angola, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, making Serbia's unresolved errors a cautionary reference point for those transfers.

Read the full analysis: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2023/12/trapped-by-automation-poverty-and-discrimination-in-serbias-welfare-state/