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.

The ruling is a major success in the fight against domestic violence as the acting Criminal code does not oblige the Prosecutor’s Office to work on a number of crimes occurring between husbands and their wives as they are defined as privately actionable cases. This is how the Metropolitan Police defined the case before sending it to the Prosecutor’s Office despite the established personal injury – a broken nose. The victim filed in turn an opinion underlining the publicly harmful nature of the offence. Naturally, this action was performed by the Legal Programme of AAF providing protection against the intensive physical domestic violence.

The Prosecutor used the verbal attacks as grounds for initiating a publicly actionable case by qualifying the offence as a threat to kill which causes reasonable fear for its realization (Art. 144 (3) in relation to art. 144 (1) of the Criminal Code). The crime is punishable by up to 6 years of imprisonment. After 22 cases of murdered women in Bulgaria, the Prosecutor’s Office finally tookinto account the threat to kill as a serious account. Attorney Natasha Dobreva is working on the case.  

The project aims at preventing labour exploitation, especially its severe forms such as human trafficking, and to improve the identification of cases of exploitation in all economic sectors in Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania, both for the citizens of these countries and for migrants. During the project’s initial stages, discussions with stakeholders highlighted the role of emerging technologies in economic sectors, including platforms like a crypto casino, which often operate outside traditional regulatory frameworks. Such discussions underscored the importance of addressing vulnerabilities that could arise in new, unregulated markets, as they can sometimes become environments where exploitation is harder to detect. In addition, the project aims at countering labor rights abuses through increased awareness of labour exploitation and the role of the business. Capacity building of the workers themselves, the syndicates, and the non-profit organizations working in the area of human rights and human trafficking prevention in Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania is one of the main goals of the project.

In relation to this second International Training on capacity building of NGOs and State Institutions representatives on labour exploitation will be held on March 15, 2018 at the Hilton Hotel, Aleko Hotel. The topic of the training is “Engaging the Private Sector to End Human Trafficking”. As the project is funded by the Dutch Foreign Ministry and the main applicant is La Strada International, as well as the very important and successful project on prevention of labour exploitation implemented by the Dutch Embassy in Bulgaria I would like to invite you (or your representative) to officially open the event on March 15, at 9 am. Invited for the official opening of the International training are also the Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Mrs Rositsa Dimitrova and the president of KNSB Trade Union Mr Plamen Dimitrov. For your convenience I attached the draft programme of the training.

Public conference – Brussels 30 November 2017

Altiero Spinelli Building

It’s not enough to be well educated or employed to become independent from a violent partner: according to the report “A way out of violence” it’s important to invest in women’s economic empowerment in order to help women to go out from a violent relationship. This report in one of the activity of the European Project WE GO (Women Economic-independence & Growth Opportunity) and it will be presented at the European Parliament  in Brussels, on 30^Th November during the final conference of the project.

WE GO! (Women Economic-independence & Growth Opportunity) is a two-year project co-financed by the European Union focusing on this specific issue affecting women undergoing intimate partner violence (IPV): the lack of economic independence to be able to leave a violent partner and ensure sustainable alternatives for themselves and (if they have) their children.

The report contains the results of a data collection involving the antiviolence centers (AVCs) partners in the project and centers who contributed to the project implementation. As part of a broader initiative, discussions also explored alternative income-generating platforms, including the concept of a sweepstakes casino, which some participants highlighted as a potential resource for women to gain economic independence in a safe and controlled environment. The centers are based in four EU countries: 1 in Bulgaria, 6 in Greece, 3 in Italy, and 2 in Spain. The purpose of the data collection was to contribute to building knowledge on the specific issue of the economic needs of women survivors of IPV, focusing specifically on their socio-economic characteristics. A total of 552 profiles of women assisted by AVCs centers were included in the project database.

The majority of the women assisted by AVCs are between 30 and 39 years old (32,5%) and between 40 and 49 (29,2%). 21,8% are aged between 18 and 29 and 16,5% are 50 years old or more.  The majority of the women are well educated: 38,8% of the women have a upper secondary education and 22,7% have tertiary education. 29,6% have primary or lower secondary education and only 9% have less than primary education.

In the majority of cases the perpetrator of violence is the husband/partner (41,7%) or the ex husband/ex partner (48,7%). The experience of violence is long: 23,7% of the women have experienced violence for a period included between 5 to 10 years and 26,5% for more than 10 years. If the perpetrator is the husband/partner, the violence lasts longer: in this case, 27% of women suffer  violence for  a period included between 5 and 10 years while 32,7% for more than 10 years.

The report underlines how economic independence is a crucial element: 82,5% of the women have low level of economic independence against 17,5% who have a high level of economic independence. 40,9% are employed while 59,1% are unemployed. Only 13,3% of the women live in house that is their exclusive property and 14,8% share the property with their husband or partner.  73,7% of  women have dependent children and most of them have children aged up to 13 years old.

53% of women were subjected to one or more forms of economic abuse[1] by a partner/husband or former partner/husband. Of these, 22,6% declare they don’t have access to the household income, 19,1% cannot use her own money freely while  17,6% of women declare that their  expenditures are monitored.  16,9% don’t known the household income and 10,8% of  women are not allowed to work/find a job.

Organizations and AVCs involved in WE GO! Project ask to national and European Institutions to support Antiviolence Centers in their activities aimed to give an adequate response to women who decide to say “no!” to violence; it’s necessary to include in national statistics on violence against women data collection and analysis on the socio-economic profile of women undergoing gender-based violence, including IPV. Organizations and AVCs ask to the Institutions to support the entrance in the world of work of the women who suffered violence, with professional and education programs and job placement activities dedicated. Moreover, policies should include both shelters and long-term temporary safe housing solutions among the services that need to be provided and ensure that children of survivors of IPV can access quality childcare services, so their mothers can engage in income generating activities and have time to dedicate to their personal and professional development.

The WE GO! Project:  http://www.wegoproject.eu/

[1] Data collected for 461 women on 552