A/HRC/44/52/Add.1 20. Despite the invaluable advantages of the Protection against Domestic Violence Act, some of its provisions do not comply with international standards and norms. Article 10 establishes a 30-day limit for a victim to request a protection order. In its concluding observations, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called on the State to “amend article 10 (1) of the Protection against Domestic Violence Act so as to remove the one-month time limit to file a petition for a protection order” (CEDAW/C/BGR/CO/4-7, para. 26 (b)). In the case of S.L v. Bulgaria, the Committee noted that “the failure by the State party to amend article 10 (1) of the Protection against Domestic Violence Act directly affected the possibility for the author to claim justice and to have access to effective remedies and protection” (CEDAW/C/73/D/99/2016, para. 7.1). 21. The Special Rapporteur also notes that article 3 of the Act does not protect women in same-sex relationships, meaning that a victim of domestic violence from a same-sex partner does not have legal protection under this law. 22. Additionally, under article 5 (1) (5), perpetrators of domestic violence may be ordered by the courts to attend specialized programmes for rehabilitation and anger and aggression management. Such orders are mandatory, according to article 296 of the Criminal Code, however compliance with such orders has not been enforced and cases of non-conformity are not regularly prosecuted. Criminal Code 23. In its concluding observations of 2012 the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called on Bulgaria to “amend its Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code in order to specifically criminalize domestic violence and marital rape and to introduce the possibility of ex officio prosecution for both offences” (CEDAW/C/BGR/CO/4-7, para. 26 (a)). The revision of the Criminal Code, which entered into force in February 2019, included domestic violence as an aggravating circumstance in homicides, bodily injuries, abduction, unlawful imprisonment, coercion and death threats, and also the criminalization of stalking. 24. According to the revision, a crime is committed “in the conditions of domestic violence” if it is preceded by the perpetrator carrying out a “systemic exercise of physical, sexual or psychological violence, placing in an economic dependence, forced restriction of [one’s] private life, personal freedom and personal rights and is carried out with respect to an ascendant, descendent, spouse or former spouse, a person they have a child with, a person they co-habit or co-habited with, or a person they live with or have lived with in the same household”.7 25. Despite these important amendments, the Special Rapporteur notes that the reform was only partial and did not address a number of provisions in the Criminal Code that are not in line with international standards. 26. According to paragraph 31 of article 93 of the Criminal Code, for a crime to be considered as having been committed in conditions of domestic violence it has to be preceded by “systematic violence”. The Office of the Prosecutor issued an ordinance that interpreted “systematic” as three separate acts of violence by the same perpetrator, which means that victims must have been subjected to three episodes of physical, sexual or psychological violence for a public prosecution to be opened. 8 That provision could expose victims of domestic violence to serious risk, put on them an unbearable and avoidable heavy burden of proof and present significant limitations to their access to justice. 27. In the Criminal Code, bodily harm is further categorized according to the level of severity as severe, average and light (arts. 128–135). These categories have implications in terms of their prosecution. Article 161 regulates the cases in which criminal prosecution is initiated upon complaint of the victim, namely for light and medium bodily harm. Paragraph 2 of the same article, amended in February 2019, provides that for average bodily harm caused to an ascendant, descendant, spouse, brother or sister, the prosecution is 7 8 Criminal Code, art. 93 (31). Information provided by the Office of the Prosecutor. 7