Sofia, September 12, 2018
On September 12th at the Quill Literary club in Sofia was announced the creation of a large scale national platform to combat the violence against children – “Childhood without violence” Coalition. 19 civil society organizations and experts who have worked for years for prevention of violence against children and its consequences, united for joint actions, provoked by the lack of advancement in state policies and practices, the lack of shared understanding in society and the deepening of the problem in the last years. The members of the “Childhood without violence” Coalition aim for the Coalition to become a major platform working for zero tolerance for violence against children which includes members from all aspects of society – civil society organizations, parents and citizens, institutions, business, media.
The platform envisages advocacy work with institutions for legislative changes and ensuring sustainable public services and measures for protecting children from violence, conducting researches, developing instruments for identifying and alerting for children at risk, which are to be used by different specialists – social workers, teachers, medical doctors and health workers, policemen, etc.
The Coalition aims also to help parents and professionals working with children, by supporting them to be the best parents and professionals by specially developed programs and trainings and by developing the resource platform endviolence.bg, which contains useful information for preventing, identifying and overcoming the implications of violence as well as the existing services in the country. Next year “Childhood without violence” envisages to conduct a widespread informational campaign on improving the understanding of violence against children and its consequences for the children and for society as a whole.
The Coalition for the moment consists of Association Roditeli, Association Demetra, Bulgarian Family Planning Association, Bulgarian Center for Non-for-Profit Law, Social Activities and Practices Institute, National Network for Children, Know-How Centre for Alternative Childcare, Association "Child and Space", Association Children and Youth, Centre for Inclusive Education, GERT Foundation,
"Animus Association" Foundation, Worldwide Orphans Foundation, For Our Children Foundation, Tulip Foundation, Applied Research and Communications Fund, LEAP Foundation, assoc. Dr. Aleksei Pamporov and assoc. Dr. VElina Todorova. The first official corporate partner of the initiative is “Nova Broadcasting Group”.
Famous people also joined in to support the platform – Iordanka Fandukova (mayor of Sofia), Maya Manolova (ombudsman), the actors Yoanna Bukovska and Ivailo Zahariev, the writer Georgi Gospodinov, the singer Poli Genova – they participated in filming a series of short videos, appealing to rethink the violence against children and its consequences. The videos were presented at the press-conference, and in September 2018 they will be aired in social networks, conventional and online media. The first videos are already uploaded and can be seen in Facebook on the “Childhood without violence” Coalition page.
Violence against children (incl. from children against children) exists in all social strata, and there are no exceptions on the base of ethnicity, social status, religion, etc. It has serious consequences and loss for society, since the children who have suffered from violence are much more likely to: get into drug abuse, suffer from depression and other psychological diseases, come in conflict with the law, have learning problems; have worsened psychological and physical development. On a global scale the economic loss from consequences from violence against children are estimated at 3 to 8% from the total global gross domestic product.
In Bulgaria the statistics for the cases of violence against children are fragmented and incomplete. The whole picture is missing, which can give realistic idea of what is happening and the full scale of the problem. On the national telephone line, maintained by "Animus Association" Foundation and the State agency for Child Protection, 11 000 calls from children were received last year. 700 from those were about cases of violence. In contradiction with observations from practice and feedback from the experts and field work of the organizations from the Coalition, there is a decrease of submitted signals and cases opened based on them by the Child Protection Departments in 2017 compared to previous years. In comparison with 2015 and 2016 when the submitted signals are approx. 3700 and 3200 respectively, and the opened cases based on them are 957 and 681 respectively, in 2017 1282 signals were submitted and 382 cases were opened. For comparison, in 2007 nearly 4693 cases of violence against children were identified as 3929 of them were registered.
The “Childhood without violence” Coalition counts on initiative’s media partners – Nova Television, Net Info, BNR, “Jenata dnes” magazine, “Mama Ninja” and expects more media to support the campaign.
