With the new school year, any student, parent or teacher could be prosecuted and humiliated on the charge of promoting a “different sexual orientation”.
The texts are vague and subject to broad interpretation, allowing them to be used as a means of pressure against any person or civil organisation.
There is no will in Parliament to solve the real problems of children and families with children in Bulgaria – in the systems of education, protection, social services and justice. Populist and propaganda texts are voted on with urgency while important reforms for children and families are postponed for years.
The National Network for Children (NNC) has been forced to withdraw its confidence from MPs, members of the Parliamentary Group for Children, who, during the discussion and adoption on 7 August 2024 of a propaganda law to amend and supplement the Pre-School and School Education Act, failed to fulfil their commitment to protect the rights of all Bulgarian children.
The voted amendments contradict the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), EU law and Bulgarian national law, including the Law on Protection against Discrimination.
The adopted legal texts deny the existence of an entire group of children, directly violating both their rights and the right of every child to live free from violence.
The provisions voted on are not just illiterate, unsound and unclear in legal and grammatical terms. They impose an extremely dangerous ideology based on hatred of difference and create the preconditions for the dehumanisation of any human being considered different for any reason. The creation of such demagogic laws is a direct route to banning dissent and imposing authoritarian rule.
Moreover, in Bulgaria, where over a third of children report being humiliated and insulted at school (UNICEF, 2021), denying the existence of an entire group of children and imposing intolerance and non-acceptance on them will lead to an increase in cases of violence, suicide and self-harm, without us even being able to assess the damage to the psyche of all children.
At the same time, the ambiguity of the provisions voted creates preconditions for their contradictory and arbitrary application. Nothing, in practice, prevents them from being used as a means of pressure against every person and civil organisation. Thus, from the new school year, any pupil, parent or teacher will be able to be persecuted and humiliated because of a ‘different sexual orientation’, and civil society will be further hystericalised and divided. With their vote, the MPs from GERB, ITN, BSP, Vazrajdane (Rebirht) and the group of independent MPs have created new problems in schools instead of solving the existing serious deficits of Bulgarian education, which students, parents, teachers and civil society organizations have been talking about for years.
The way the MPs voted in the Parliament showed a lack of will and desire to overcome the cheap electoral populism and to solve the important issues for children and families in our country, which we again raised with an official letter a few days ago. These include: reform of the child protection system; abolition of discriminatory conditions for the allocation of medical food for malnourished children; transparency in the process of building the National Children’s Hospital; ensuring equal access to early childhood care services for every child over 2 years of age; securing sustainable funding for the National Safer Internet Center and measures against online crimes against children, reform of the education system and a total of 18 other specific urgent tasks.
We believe that the Bulgarian National Assembly should focus on them, not on false threats and the imposition of an ideology of hate.
The parliamentary group for the children of the NNC in the 50th National Assembly so far numbered 26 deputies from 4 parties and coalitions. Seven of them supported the law by voting in favour.
Therefore, the NNC withdraws its confidence from the following members of the NNC Parliamentary Group of Children:
Dragomir Stoynev (BSP)
Iliana Zhekova (GERB-SSD)
Krasimir Valchev (GERB-SSD)
Maya Dimitrova (BSP)
Pavel Hristov (GERB-SSD)
Rumen Hristov (GERB-SDS)
Sevim Ali (MRF)
In the short time this parliament has before another snap election, MPs have chosen to engage in suggestions of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation” in schools instead of much-needed and long overdue reforms that are truly in the interests of the country’s students, teachers and parents.
Some of these are: the adoption of a standard for quality management in education; the introduction of a competency-based model in the selection, training and appraisal of principals and teachers; measures against too-early profiling, which is to the detriment of pupils; the huge segregation in education; the parallel system of private tutoring and many more problems, which even a government body such as the Court of Auditors has signalled with a recently published audit report on the quality of Bulgarian education.
We call on all MPs to remember why they are in the position they are in and the oath they have taken, to repeal the shameful populist texts and to commit to solving the real problems of Bulgaria’s children and families.
We call on the President of the Republic of Bulgaria Rumen Radev to return this hastily passed law and to protect the children and the education system in Bulgaria from populism.
We at the NNC remain ready to assist in the planning and implementation of all government policies related to the rights and well-being of children and families.
Here are the positions and official letters of other organizations:
Ministry of Education and Science – Statement to the Committee on Education and Science of the 50th National Assembly
The Association of European Journalists-Bulgaria (AEJ-Bulgaria) – No place for “Kremlin package” laws in Bulgaria
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee – BHC: Law against “propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation” violates human rights
The Union of Managers in the System of National Education in Bulgaria – Opinion on the amendment and supplement to the Pre-School and School Education Act
