Bulgarian Fund for Women and 13 feminist organizations and collectives, are organizing a protest on the International Day Against Violence Against Women. The protest’s slogan is “For as long as there’s violence, the fight will go on” and will start from the Independence square, with opening statements from some participants.
The event aims to draw attention the lack of institutional framework on gender-based violence’s differentiation requiring specific set of contra-measures. The protest’s organizers consider the gender-based violence tightly linked with a number of social problems such as public services crisis, including healthcare, racism, lack of support for people with disabilities; homophobia, transphobia.
The protest’s requests are spread among five areas:
- Prevention through reforms in education and educational campaigns to eradicate stereotypes regarding gender roles.
- Visibility through collection and promotion of statistical data on the cases of gender-based violence.
- Protection and Support for survivors of gender-based violence by opening of more shelters for the victims.
- Legislation and work with perpetrators, so that there are no more cases of deaths preceded by issued restraining orders; programs for perpetrators to change their attitudes and behavior.
- State policies based on the principle of gender equality which recognize and tackle the vulnerability of women with restricted access to public services, of women in disadvantaged positions, and of poor women.
Last year’s protest was attended by more than 1000 people.
