The Center of Women's Studies and Policies was the Bulgarian partner in the international project Stop Violence Against Women – www.stopvaw.org from its launch in 2004 till March 2007. It acted as the Bulgarian Monitor of violence against women and maintains the Bulgarian Country Page on the website, which is mostly in English. Since the end of 2006 the pages of all participating countries have been available in their languages as well.

The materials for the country page provide information about Bulgarian anti-discrimination and anti-violence legislation, Bulgarian NGOs working in the field. The Monitor also makes regular overview of the situation in Bulgaria and gathers relevant news from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian readers, apart from the website of CWSP, can already find updated information in Bulgarian on the Bulgarian Country Page of the international website. CWSP regularly informs the visitors of its website about the events in the region in its quarterly newsletter   "Stop Violence Against Women" (in Bulgarian), summarising the information provided by all participating countries in the international project.The goal of the National Violence Against Women Monitor Program, implemented by the CWSP, is to expand the content and mentoring function of the STOPVAW country pages so as to better serve women’s advocates in each of the countries addresses by STOPVAW.

What is the Stop Violence against Women Website:  www.stopvaw.org?

This is a forum for information, advocacy and change. It is developed by the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights (MAHR) with the participation and financial support of UNIFEM and the Network Women’s Program of the Open Society Institute. The website is developed as a comprehensive tool for the benefit of women’s advocates in Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Russian Federation, Mongolia and Kosovo. It provides resources, trainings and message boards designed to assist these advocates in their efforts to eliminate violence against women in their countries and regions.

The website addresses four principal forms of violence against women: trafficking in women, domestic violence, sexual assault and sexual harassment. It also provides more general resources on International Law, Advocacy Tools and NGO Resources. Finally, the website includes country pages for each of the countries described above (29 in all). Each country page includes a narrative discussion of law and policy developments related to violence against women, a summary of relevant research and reports, monitoring of the country’s reporting to U.N. human rights bodies and a news section.

The participating countries of Central and Eastern Europe include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The members of the Commonwealth of Independent States are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. (see: map of the participating countries)

  Monitoring Report on Violence against Women

In 2005 the Network Women’s Program of the Open Society Institute invited the 24 National VAW Monitors working on the international website project StopVAW – Stop Violence Against Women, to gather information based on a common for all participating countries questionnaire in order to map the situation in their countries on violence against women, with special regard to the state response to it. The monitoring methodology was based on Recommendation (2002)5 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on the protection of women against violence.

As a result of the project from December 2005 to October 2006 were prepared monitoring reports, which became the basis for 22 Country Fact Sheets. Besides the factual information, the Fact Sheets issue clear recommendations to governments, serving as effective tools for advocacy at national and international levels.

The Recommendations to the Government in the Fact Sheet for Bulgaria were prepared based on the information gathered by the  Center of Women’s Studies and Policies – the Bulgarian partner in the monitoring project, coordinated by Liliya Sazonova.

Full-length Country reports of the participating countries in the StopVaw project will be available soon in English on the website of the project. The translation of the Bulgarian report is coming soon and will be posted on CWSP's website.

Last update: 26.02.2007