Sofia, March 27, 2018
The campaign "You are not alone! Together against Violence " is addressing the government with five main goals. The Bulgarian Family Planning and Sexual Health Association (BFPA) is supporting the campaign as one of the non-governmental organizations and several independent media united against domestic violence for the first time as a Bulgarian civil society. The campaign has five basic change goals and insists on specific government commitments to ensure the prevention and successful fight in violence against women:
• Incriminating the domestic violence - all forms of violence against women: domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment, persecution, systemic psychological violence, and all other serious forms of violence to be included explicitly in the Penal Code and to be treated and punished as crimes.
• Creating and sustaining unified database in MoI for victims and perpetrators, which to be available for all experts working in the field: judges, prosecutors, policemen, psychologists, social workers.
• Financing and implementing the already created and successfully piloted programs for educating psychologists, policemen, judges, social workers on working with victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.
• Creating of 28 crisis centers – one in every region of the country.
• Programme on prevention of violence – via trainings on prevention of violence and nonviolent communication among young people and general public. Creating of National Council for combating violence under the council of Ministers and realization of systematic informational and sensitizing campaigns on prevention of violence against women and domestic violence.
It is not only about personal stories and in some cases people’ life - all of us pay a big economical price for the violence. According to a survey of the Institute for Gender Equality, made in 2017, the violence costs to the EU 256 billion euros a year. Globally, domestic violence costs annually about 8 trillion dollars.
