Gender-based violence is a serious problem in Bulgaria. Data show that in our country at least one in four women has experienced domestic violence, and every two weeks a woman loses her life. Bulgaria has refused to ratify the main document committing countries to the fight against this type of violence – the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention.
The website spasena.org and the information it contains are implemented and updated under the project Mapping the Murders of Women in Bulgaria 2018-2023, with the financial support of the Bulgarian Fund for Women and the European Union.
The project aims to raise awareness among all stakeholders and, as a result, increase public sensitivity to the issue of gender-based violence and its most common manifestation—domestic violence—thereby helping to generate the political will necessary for legislative and practical measures for prevention. The project activities include:
Spasena.org is one of the instruments of a large-scale project which aim is to raise both public awareness and institutional competence in addressing domestic and gender-based violence. The website was created by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee in 2018 under the domain ubita.org, within the first in a series of projects Mapping the Murders of Women in Bulgaria, supported by the International Women’s Club – Sofia with a donation of 5,000 BGN.
As part of this first stage in the project’s history, an interactive map was created, providing an analysis of all court cases related to femicide—the killing of women because they are women. Media monitoring of all cases of killings of women by men in Bulgaria was also established. Both initiatives remain unique in the country, and since their launch in 2018 they have been repeatedly cited as the only reliable statistics on the issue.
In 2021, in cooperation with the Alliance for Protection against Gender-Based Violence (AZNOP), the project Stop Gender-Based Violence against Women and Children in Bulgaria – GBVOUT was implemented, co-financed under the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme. As part of this project, a large-scale information campaign was carried out, featuring video, VR simulation, and intensive public outreach on the issues of domestic violence and femicide.
During this period, the website ubita.org underwent a transformation: it was renamed spasena.org, and its overall content became more hopeful. A series of specialized texts were added to support anyone facing domestic or gender-based violence. These informational pages—still accessible and updated—are dedicated not only to victims, but also to witnesses and to actual or potential perpetrators of violence, who have a real opportunity to prevent a fatal outcome.
In September 2024, the most recent stage in the development of the spasena.org platform began, under the project Mapping the Murders of Women in Bulgaria 2018–2023, with the financial support of the Bulgarian Fund for Women and the European Union. As part of this continuation, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee updated the information in the interactive map of court cases related to femicide in Bulgaria, adding cases from the period 2018–2023, and continues its efforts to foster public and institutional awareness through detailed analysis of case law and a new large-scale information campaign.
With the financial support of the Bulgarian Fund for Women and the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bulgarian Fund for Women, the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither BFW, nor the EU or EACEA can be held responsible for them.