A/HRC/44/52/Add.1 31. In its concluding observations of 2018, the Human Rights Committee recommended that Bulgaria amend the Protection against Discrimination Act to explicitly include gender identity as a ground of discrimination and fully recognize the equality of same-sex couples (CCPR/C/BGR/CO/4, para. 12). The Committee further raised concerns “at the persistence of stereotypical attitudes, prejudice, hostility and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, including as reflected in the Constitutional Court’s decision No. 13/2018 of 27 July 2018” (ibid., para. 11). The Special Rapporteur was alarmed to hear that after the decision of the Constitutional Court, attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons had increased. She also received with concern information from civil society claiming that cases regarding discrimination against such persons submitted to the Commission on the Prohibition against Discrimination since 2014 had been overwhelmingly rejected for lack of grounds. 12 The Commission is a quasijudicial independent body that resolves disputes related to complaints about discrimination. Equality between Men and Women Act 32. The Equality between Women and Men Act was adopted in 2016. It imposes obligations on the Minister of Labour and Social Policy to “coordinate the establishment and the maintenance of a system for gender equality monitoring, and the drafting of a report on gender equality in the Republic of Bulgaria” (see CEDAW/C/BGR/8, para. 4). The Act also regulates the role of the relevant institutions in the development and functioning of the gender equality monitoring system. While recognizing the progress achieved in setting up these necessary institutional mechanisms, the Special Rapporteur is concerned by the challenges that remain for achieving equality between men and women in practice. Data published in 2018 by the National Statistical Institute in the field of employment, wages and income revealed persistent economic gender inequality: women get lower wages, lower pensions and spend more time on unpaid domestic work and care. V. National machinery and independent human rights institutions 33. At the institutional level, Bulgaria does not have a centralized body that deals with issues related to violence against women. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the establishment in October 2019 of an interministerial Working Group within the Ministry of Justice to amend the Protection against Domestic Violence Act and a national coordination body responsible for the coordination, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and measures to prevent and combat all forms of violence against women. However, until October 2017 the lack of an inter-agency and interministerial coordination body caused delays in responding to cases of domestic violence and often led to the reoccurrence of violence against victims and loss of trust by victims in the system for protection and assistance. 34. On 31 March of every year, the Council of Ministers adopts a programme of national domestic violence prevention and protection, which indicates the activities to be implemented during the year, the responsible structures, the sources of funding, the respective time frames for the implementation of those activities and the expected results. The scope of the programme includes services for victims of domestic violence, raising public awareness, training for service providers and the protection of victims, as well as mechanisms for coordinating and monitoring the activities. The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the annual allocation of funding for projects for the development and implementation of programmes for the prevention of domestic violence and protection by non-profit entities under the same law (art. 6). The Special Rapporteur received numerous 12 The disaggregated data on complaints related to discrimination based on sexual orientation received since 2014 is not available for all years in the Commission’s annual reports. In 2018, the Commission reported having received 751 complaints and opened 721 cases: of these, 459 concerned discrimination on the basis of disability; 180, personal status; 57, social status; 51, age; 28, ethnicity; 23, financial status; 21, education; 20, convictions; 19, sex; and only 1 related to sexual orientation. 9