Two Parliamentary Parties Join Outcry against National Child Strategy

Two parliamentary parties have joined the public outcry against the proposed National Strategy for the Child 2019-2030. Volya and VMRO presented their objections on Wednesday following almost three months of protests by political parties, parent and family associations, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Protesters have said that the draft strategy curtails parents’ rights, downplays the role of the family and gives social services excessive powers. On Tuesday, Labour and Social Policy Minister Bisser Petkov said the strategy will be redrafted to make it acceptable to all stakeholders.

Volya told a news briefing on Wednesday that the strategy should be urgently rewritten and made more concrete. “This is just another administrative, empty-worded document which lacks any
concreteness and clarity,” the party’s Boryana Georgieva said. “We are opposed to any hint in the strategy that children can be easily separated from their parents in pursuance of vaguely formulated provisions in the strategy.”

The party noted that the proposed strategy identifies the same problems that were spelled out in the previous one, adopted in 2008. “It turns out that the strategy has produced no results for 11 years,” Georgieva commented.

Volya called for allocating more funding for lone mothers rather than foster families. “We want the bulk of the money to go to the real families of the children,” Georgieva insisted.

Administrators who promote alien ideologies should be punished (for example, with a fine equivalent to a month’s wage), the party said. Such transgressions include advocacy for “a third gender” and using the terms “parent one” and “parent two” instead of “mother” and “father” in kindergarten admission applications.

Each month, one homeroom session at school should be devoted to the suppression of aggressive behaviour among children, Volya suggested.

Meanwhile, VMRO issued a written statement in which they wondered why the State Agency for Child Protection refused to publish the list of NGOs with which it had discussed the National Strategy for the Child.

VMRO said the draft strategy seeks to impose the view that the government knows what is best for a child. “There is no way that a civil servant knows better than the parent what the best interests of a child are,” the party argued.

“The so-called National Strategy for the Child aims to push through the ‘Istanbul-style’ assumption that the whole Bulgarian nation consists of abusers and criminals who should be placed under surveillance and control for every step they make,” VMRO said. The reference was to the Istanbul Convention (formally: the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence), which Bulgaria has refused to ratify.