A/HRC/44/52/Add.1 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Dubravka Šimonović, conducted an official visit to Bulgaria from 14 to 21 October 2019, at the invitation of the Government. The main focus of the visit was to assess laws, policies and the provision of services and good practices, with a view to recommending measures aimed at eradicating gender-based violence against women and strengthening the implementation of the country’s international obligations on violence against women and women’s human rights. 2. The Special Rapporteur expresses her appreciation for the excellent cooperation extended to her by the Government before, throughout and after the visit. During the visit, she met with various government representatives, including representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and the Ministry of the Interior. She also met with a judge of the Constitutional Court, a member of the parliament and representatives of the National Judicial Institute. She held a meeting with representatives of the National Commission for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings and with the National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues. In addition, she met with the Deputy Mayors of Dimitrovgrad and Haskovo. She also met with the Ombudsperson and with the Chair of the Commission for Protection against Discrimination and convened meetings with a broad range of civil society organizations. The Special Rapporteur visited the women’s correctional facility in Sliven and crisis centres for women fleeing violence in Sofia, Dimitrovgrad and Pernik. 3. She is very grateful to the representative of UNICEF Bulgaria and her staff for the invaluable support provided before and during the visit. She looks forward to a fruitful dialogue with the Government and other stakeholders on the implementation of the actionoriented recommendations included in the present report. II. General context 4. In the last 30 years, Bulgaria has taken important steps towards becoming a political democracy, starting with the adoption in 1991 of a new Constitution that provided a wide range of rights and freedoms. In 2007, Bulgaria officially joined the European Union. Nevertheless, the visit of the Special Rapporteur took place at a moment of regression and pushbacks on women’s rights, exacerbated by a massive campaign against the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, (the Istanbul Convention) which Bulgaria signed in 2016. The campaign against its ratification, supported by eminent political figures and the Orthodox Church, was based on misinterpretation and distortion of the content of the Convention and the term “gender”, which led to the creation of a hostile environment for women’s rights’ organizations and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community, and expressly cultivated homophobia, transphobia and bias against the term gender. 5. During her visit, the Special Rapporteur received worrying information about the open intimidation of activists and women’s rights organizations working to prevent and respond to violence against women. Many of these organizations reported an increase in hate speech and the shaming of individuals and organizations that supported the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. The Special Rapporteur also noted the normalization and tolerance of gender-based violence against women, in particular domestic violence, which is rooted in patriarchal attitudes and gender stereotypes and is still considered a private matter that remains underreported. 6. The “anti-gender” campaign took place during the ratification process of the Istanbul Convention and prompted 75 members of the parliament to request the Constitutional Court to decide on the conformity of the Convention with the Bulgarian Constitution. The Constitutional Court delivered its judgment on 27 July 2018, with four dissenting opinions, 3