Bulgaria: Progress against the scourge of child abandonment

Sofia - Bulgaria, the world's worst country for newborn abandonment just two years ago, is finally making progress in curbing this scourge, of which disabled children are the primary victims, according to an independent report presented Friday.

The number of children entering state care has fallen in the EU's poorest country, thanks to family support, adoptions and foster care, the Helsinki Committee, a human rights organization, has said.

According to a report published at the end of 2012 by UNICEF, Bulgaria is the worst country in the world for the abandonment of children aged 0 to 3 years (780 abandonments per 100,000 births), a situation inherited from the communist era.

Bulgaria was then classified by the UN organization as one of four states - along with Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russia - with " an extremely high rate of abandonment in homes of children under three years old ." Half of them live in Russia.

The Helsinki Committee noted on Friday that the number of babies entering institutions in Bulgaria fell from 2,455 in 2010 to 1,183 at the end of 2013. During the same period, the total number of children placed in reception centers, which are often overwhelmed by their mission, also fell, from 5,695 to 3,819.

UNICEF attributes this progress to a 2010 reform targeting families with children under three. The measures combine support for parents looking after or picking up their children, the establishment of day care centers, and, for those whose parents refuse to look after them, more frequent placement in foster families.

- Doctors advise giving up -

In Bulgaria, poverty, strong prejudices, and the dilapidated state of public health deter most potential families. Doctors themselves often advise mothers of disabled children to abandon their children, notes UNICEF.

The Bulgarian government is also making efforts to develop adoption.

Italy, the United States, and France are the main countries of adoption for Bulgarian children. And of the 1,377 children adopted abroad between 2010 and 2013, a third have a disability, according to the Ministry of Justice.

In its report, the Helsinki Committee cites the example of a girl with Down syndrome who, at the age of 9, weighed only 5 kilos and could not stand. Her physical and intellectual development has since taken off after she was adopted by an American family.

Bulgaria has finally begun closing its worst foster homes. However, the Helsinki Committee points to blatant examples of bureaucratic negligence, which resulted in children being left to grow up into adolescence in foster homes, even though their families had never heard from them and they could have been adoptable.

Authorities in Stara Zagora (central Russia), cited in the report, took 12 years to register two disabled boys abandoned at birth for adoption. Both were eventually adopted by an American family.