Below you will find the special reports of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee in English. More reports are available from the Bulgarian version of the site in Bulgarian.

 

IHF Delegation Visit to Places of Detention in Bulgaria NEW
April 2005
Report from the visit of the IHF delegation of human rights NGOs to places of detention in Bulgaria on September 27 and 28 2004. The mission monitored the respect for the human rights of persons placed involuntarily in state institutions: prisons, pre-trial detention centres, psychiatric hospitals and social care homes for people with mental disorders.

The Archipelago of the Forgotten: Social Care Homes for People with Mental Disorders in Bulgaria NEW
April 2005
The report summaries the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee about the situation in the social care homes for people with mental disorders. The report is the result of the three-year monitoring in these institutions, which accommodate people with intellectual disabilities, mental illness and dementia.

IHF Delegation Visit to Places of Detention in Macedonia
January 2005
Report from the IHF mission in places of detention in the Republic of Macedonia. The mission monitored the respect for the human rights of persons placed involuntarily in state institutions (institutions for confinement of persons sentenced for criminal offences or detained on suspicion of having committed an offence, institutions for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for the purposes of active treatment of mentally ill, and institutions for involuntary placement of persons with severe developmental disabilities for the purposes of social care.

 

Places of Detention in the Russian Federation
October 2004
The joint report was written after an international NGO mission for monitoring places of detention in the Russian Federation. The delegation comprised of: Association for the Prevention of Torture, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in the Republic of Macedonia, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland, Human Rights Watch, Hungarian Helsinki Committee, International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, and the Moscow Helsinki Group. The delegation visited five institutions under the authority of the Ministry of Justice in the Moscow region and two psychiatric hospitals under the authority of the Ministry of Health. The report drawn up after the visits outlines the delegation's findings and comes up with a number of recommendations.

Alternative NGO Report on Bulgaria's Progress Towards Accession to the EU, 2004
Summary and Recommendations
October 2004
Save the Children produced, with a group of Bulgarian NGOs this report, which provides an update on developments in the areas of social and human rights policy in Bulgaria and recommendations for the Bulgarian government.

Alternative report to the Bulgarian government's Third and Fourth Consolidated Reports to the Committee against Torture
April 2004
The report makes an evaluation of the consolidated state report to the CAT on the implementation of the obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture, as well as the developments in Bulgaria after 1998 in the sphere of combatting torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.