New publication: Bulgaria Needs Asessment: Briefing Note
Today, we’ve published a Briefing Note on our Bulgarian Needs Assessment, conducted at the end of January 2025.
It presents key findings from the assessment, background information, and country context, concluding with four recommendations to improve the lives of people on the move. It underscores Bulgaria’s failure to uphold its obligations concerning people’s fundamental rights, the critical need for advocacy to challenge these abuses, and the broader implications of Europe’s restrictive migration policies, which continue to prioritise deterrence over the safety and well-being of people on the move.
Key messages
Systemic Border Violence and Rights Violations
Bulgaria’s treatment of people on the move is characterized by illegal pushbacks, police brutality, and widespread violations of international protection standards.
Deteriorating Camp Conditions
State-run reception centres fail to provide adequate sanitation, food, or healthcare, with residents describing conditions as inhumane and prison-like. Unaccompanied minors face unsafe living environments, arbitrary expulsions, and neglect.
Criminalization of Humanitarian Aid
Volunteer groups and rescue teams face obstruction and criminalization, with Bulgarian authorities actively preventing life-saving assistance to people on the move, as seen in the tragic deaths of three Egyptian minors abandoned at the Turkish border in late December 2024, as revealed in the investigation by the No Name Kitchen and Rotte Balkaniche collectives. You can read their investigation report, Frozen Lives, which details the events that transpired between December 27 and 29, 2024, in southeastern Bulgaria, near the border with Türkiye and the reprisals their collectives faced in the immediate aftermath.
Lack of Legal Support and Asylum Rights
Many asylum seekers are unable to access legal aid or asylum procedures, leaving them without protection or due process, particularly, at present, Syrians whose cases are being systematically rejected. At the time of the field trip to collect data for this report, people living in Bulgaria’s biggest asylum centre in Harmanli, a town close to the border with Turkey, began a protest against the mass rejection of Syrian asylum claims, and as part of a wider call to the Bulgarian and European authorities to take urgent action against the hostile and degrading policies and conditions which govern their lives.
Urgent Need for Accountability and Reform
The European Commission must hold Bulgaria accountable for systemic abuses by suspending migration-related funding, reallocating resources to rights-monitoring organizations, launching independent investigations, and enforcing binding humanitarian protections under EU law.
Recommendations
1. Ensure access to Fundamental Rights
Bulgaria’s State Agency for Refugees and its Ministry of Interior must guarantee that people on the move, regardless of their legal status, are not deprived of fundamental rights including the right to life, and to basic needs; sufficient, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, access to medical care, and to truthful and essential information - accessible in a language they understand - for informed decision-making. Systemic breaches of these rights must be tracked and challenged at the European level to ensure that accountability is taken, and that they are addressed and rectified.
Regarding the Bulgarian authorities’ grievous inaction leading to the deaths of three Egyptian children on the Turkish border between 27-30 December last year, we echo the demands of solidarians from the No Name Kitchen and Collettivo Rotte Balcaniche collectives in calling for the European Commission to suspend AMIF and ISF funding until rights protections are ensured, reallocate resources to rights-monitoring organizations, launch an independent investigation into systemic abuses by Bulgarian authorities, advocate for humanitarian protections in the Facilitation Directive, and consider triggering Article 7 to address rule of law concerns.
2. Accountability for border deaths and decisive action to prevent further loss of life.
Following on from Recommendation One, Bulgarian and EU Governments and other relevant authorities such as Frontex must take full accountability for their roles - whether through deliberate action, passive inaction, or lack of oversight - for deaths occurring along the Turkish border. Immediate action is needed to provide assistance to people in distress, uphold the obligation to protect lives, and ensure accountability, restitution and compensation for victims’ families who are entirely shut out of restorative justice processes due to lack of procedural rigour and accessibility.
Failures - and indeed complicity - in this regard should be publicly acknowledged and accounted for, and concrete steps must be taken to prevent further loss of life. Solidarians should not fear or face criminalisation for stepping in to fill the gaps led by state and international inaction; the Bulgarian Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs must ensure the protection of human rights defenders working in solidarity with people on the move. EU authorities must ensure that humanitarian protections are provided for in their New Facilitation Directive.
3. Urgently improve living conditions in camps
Urgent reforms are needed to ensure dignified living conditions in camps and other facilities in Bulgaria. This includes addressing food security, improving hygiene and sanitation facilities, and safeguarding the health and dignity of all residents. The State Agency for Refugees (SAR) and agencies responsible for food distribution and sanitation must be held accountable for meeting basic humanitarian standards, and European monitoring mechanisms should be prepared and enabled to suspend financial support for asylum procedures in the face of continued, unaddressed violations.
4. End systemic dehumanisation in the camp system
The State Agency for Refugees (SAR) should be condemned for the widespread mistreatment and dehumanizing conditions in state-run camps across the country and provided with immediate steps for improvement. The National Council on Migration, Borders, Asylum and Integration Policies should develop an advisory plan in coordination with the Ministry of Interior (МВР) and the SAR for the effective reform of policies that normalize such treatment immediately to ensure that all individuals are treated with dignity and respect and develop monitoring and accountability measures for implementation to prevent further human rights violations.