Social Activities and Practice Institute and Animus Association Foundation are organizing
a Regional conference “Children’s Cry behind Closed Doors” on 02 and 03 of Dec, 2021

We will share our experience in training professionals all over the country for coping with cases of domestic violence where children are victims and/or witnesses and how we have designed a practice-changing intervention. Further, you will be able to hear how our neighboring countries organize their protection activities and how child-centered approach could be applied.

More information is available here.

You could register for the conference here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvc–spj0rGNeVRw69huzQvLg3tF1YN5zR

The events will be livestreamed on the FB profile of SAPI: https://www.facebook.com/sapibg

As part of the activities within the TOLERANT project (AMIF/821655), the team developed a Guide for Integrated Service Provision to Support Access to Employment for Third Country National Women Victims of Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation. The Guide discusses the challenges and difficulties regarding integration in the labour market for third-country-national victims of trafficking such as the language barrier, discrimination and stigma, trauma and consequences, etc.  In addition, the document also makes propositions on the provision of integrated support which includes medical aid, accommodation, legal aid, etc. The Guide also includes work principles, methods and approaches to working with trafficking in human beings. The Guide can be accessed on Animus Association Foundation’s website in Bulgarian and in English.

Video clip

The conclusions of the Report show that Bulgaria is still a transit country for refugees and asylum seekers as the majority of them prefer to continue on with their journey to other European states. In addition, there exists large disproportions in the number of men and women – only about 1/6 of those arriving in Bulgaria are women. Last but not least, there is not one single woman among the migrant flow who is officially identified as a victims of trafficking in human beings.

The report makes a number of recommendations among which improved identification of vulnerabilities to trafficking, holistic state policies for integration, improved cooperation among all stakeholders, a detailed methodology for integration, etc.

The whole report is available in Bulgarian and in English and is published on Animus Association Foundation’s website.

http://animusassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Animus-TOLERANT-national-report-FINAL-31.03..pdf

On November 1^st, 2019, Animus Association Foundation, in partnership with Society and Safety Foundation, started the implementation of the “Pro-active against Violence against Women” project. It will continue for 36 months and is financially supported by Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Norway under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area.

Society and Safety Foundation is a non-governmental organization with public benefit purposes, which works for changing people’s opinions police officers (employees of the Ministry of Interior) and for building relationships of mutual trust and partnership.

The main goal of the project is to raise awareness and activate the general public to act against violence against women.

The main activities of the project include:

• A study on the police officers’ attitudes in four regions of the country (Sofia-city, Silistra, Smolyan, and Sliven);
• Monitoring and analysis of the work of key institutions working on domestic violence (Courts, the Prosecutor’s Offices, Social Services, etc.);
• An awareness-raising campaign aiming at clarifying the domestic violence phenomenon;
• An advocacy campaign aiming at providing knowledge to and developing skills of police officers to recognize and intervene in cases of domestic violence.

Expected results:

• Increase in reporting of cases of domestic violence and support provided to women by 30%;
• Increase awareness of police officers and the general public regarding domestic violence and violence against women;

The trainings on how to work on cases of domestic violence provided to police officers will contribute to putting an end to the violence and increasing the trust towards the Police regarding cases of domestic violence.

The analysis of cases from the practice and the data collection will indicate the problematic fields as well as inform which policies and practices work and which do not work. The conclusions will contribute to the improving of national policies on domestic and gender-based violence.

The campaign aimed at encouraging the reporting of cases of domestic violence, implemented together with the Police, will  rely on different communication channels in order to reach a maximum number of people.

Encouraging active civil actions on cases of domestic violence will improve the overall protection of victims of domestic violence.

This publication is created with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of Animus Association Foundation and under no circumstances can it be considered that this document reflects an official statement of the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area and the Operator – Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria.

On January 9th, 2020, Animus Association Foundation, together with Society and Safety Foundation, organized the first focus group with police officers for the region of Sofia-city. During the discussions, one unexpected topic that emerged was the prevalence of online financial abuse, which led to exploring potential solutions such as a Casino ohne Verifizierung Test as a method to better understand and prevent financial exploitation in digital spaces. The aim of the focus group remained to study the knowledge and attitudes of police officers on the topic of domestic violence, as well as to identify possible needs for additional training and information on the topic.

There will be tree more focus groups in the regions of Sliven, Silistra, and Smolyan.

The focus group was organized within the ACF 41/ “Pro-active against Violence against Women” project financially supported by Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Norway under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area. The goal of the project is to raise awareness and activate the civil society to stand up against violence against women.

This publication is created with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of Animus Association Foundation and under no circumstances can it be considered that this document reflects an official statement of the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area and the Operator – Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria.

Support services aimed at victims of crime focus on specific categories, therefore, they do not reach a wider spectrum of beneficiaries. The overall slow pace of justice administration remains a basic problem and contributes to the secondary victimisation of victims. Finally, there seem to be problems of underfunding, which reasonably affect the quality and the range of the provided support services.

All the above result from an in-depth analysis of the legal framework of the rights and protection of victims of crime and its implementation in Bulgaria, performed by Animus Association Foundation, as part of the SupportVoC project.

The results of the analysis as well as the legal framework and effective application of the EU Directive 2012/29/EU (especially of Article 8) will be presented and discussed at the “How we support victims of crime in Bulgaria” info day, organized by the Animus Association Foundation at SOHO (4 Iskar Str.) on DEC 19, 2018.

Diliana Markova and Donka Petrova will present the two main output of the project so far: Review and analysis of the Bulgarian national legal framework on the rights and protection of victims of crime and its application: contributing to an effective implementation of Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime and Recommendations for the Effective Implementation of Article 8 of Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime.

SupportVoC is an EU project aiming to contribute to the promotion and protection of rights of Victims of Crime (VoC) in Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Cyprus.

It is funded by the Justice Programme (2014-2020) of the European Union and is implemented by a Consortium of six partners consisting of University of Barcelona (UB) – Spain, leader of the project, KMOP Social Action and Innovation Centre – Greece, National Centre for Social Solidarity (EKKA) – Greece, Animus Association Foundation (AAF) – Bulgaria, “Hope For Children” CRC Policy Center (HFC) – Cyprus, and CESIE – Italy.