Despite more than a quarter of a century of post-communist development and almost 10 years of European Union membership, Bulgaria is still struggling with establishing rule of law and effective law-enforcement policies, with high-level corruption, plaguing economic activity and extracting public sector resources, and with regions and communities living in extreme poverty. Regional disparities between the capital and a few larger cities and the remaining periphery become ever more noticeable. People in many smaller municipalities face growing conventional crime rates, unemployment, limited access to quality education and healthcare. Quality of living and wellbeing in most of the remote and poorly developed municipalities is deteriorating.
All these factors pose a major threat to human security (HS), defined in the broader terms of the concept to encompass human rights and dignity, economic security and employment, access to education and healthcare, cohesion, access to justice, democratic governance and rule of law. Policies for Development has joined the initiative of the Citizens’ Network for Peace, Reconciliation and Human Security (CN4HS), which unites leading civil society organizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Kosovo. It aims at reinvigorating the public and media discussion on the issues of human security in Bulgaria and the region and to outline key policy measures and directions of public institutions at local and national level as well as civic structures to address the most acute problems of security, wellbeing and justice for the individual citizens in Bulgaria.
More information of the issue can be found at the Citizen’s Network for Peace, Reconciliation and Human Security
