Under Far-Right Pressure, Bulgaria Scraps Child Refugee Shelters Ahead Of Key Elections

SOFIA -- Officials in Sofia had discussed and approved months ago plans to create two shelters to house just 20 refugee children who had ended up in the Bulgarian capital without parents, relatives, or any family.

But with parliamentary elections on October 27, far-right political forces sensed an opportunity to not only demonize migrants but score political points as well with like-minded supporters.

They quickly organized protests in Sofia, claiming that instead of two small shelters for unaccompanied children, officials were planning to build sprawling refugee centers housing hundreds of migrants in the Bulgarian capital.

Although the outcry was based on lies, and the protest turnouts were relatively meager -- and largely isolated to the political fringes -- it was enough apparently to kill the refugee housing project.

Trauma And Loss

The center-right GERB party, which had approved the plan earlier this summer, recently announced it was submitting a proposal to annul a municipal council decision from July green-lighting the project. And both districts where the two centers would be based announced that they were pulling out.

Seemingly lost in the brouhaha were the parentless children who had sought refuge in Bulgaria after fleeing hardship and conflict.

Lora Voynova, a Bulgarian representative at the UN's children's agency, UNICEF, told RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service that the children are "extremely vulnerable, as they are separated from their family and have to varying degrees experienced loss, trauma, detachment from school and their environment."

A protest against the proposed refugee shelters on October 9 in the Vitosha district of Sofia.

With its borders serving as the outer borders of the EU and located at the start of the Eastern Mediterranean migration route, Bulgaria is frequently the first destination within the bloc for migrants and refugees, who are often seeking relief from persecution and conflict.

In recent years, the escalation of international and internal conflicts has forced more than 50,000 people -- 13,000 of whom are children -- to seek international protection in Bulgaria.

Since 2017, the number of unaccompanied children has increased significantly and is currently about 70 percent of the total number of children applying for international protection, according to UNICEF data.

From January to September, 2,240 unaccompanied children sought protection in Bulgaria, according to Bulgarian Refugee Agency data provided to RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service. For 2023, the number of children seeking protection was 3,843.

Seven Elections In Over Three Years

On October 27, voters in Bulgaria will go to the polls to elect a new parliament for the seventh time in three and a half years. The last elections in June failed to produce a majority government.

Amid voter fatigue, the far-right, pro-Kremlin Revival party is tipped to do well, with opinion polls putting them second or third, along with front-runner GERB and the We Continue The Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition. Revival and its leader, Kostadin Kostadinov, have railed against migrants, NATO, LGBT rights, and sanctioning Russia for its war on Ukraine, among other issues.

Stopping migration and kicking migrants out has not only been an issue of the far-right. The center-right GERB party has promised "zero illegal migration and secure borders for every Bulgarian citizen."

'Refugees Out'

The first protest against the proposed refugee shelters was held on October 9 in the Vitosha district of Sofia, one of the two sites picked for the project. The event, billed as No Migrants In Knyazhevo -- the neighborhood in Vitosha where the refugee shelter was to be established -- was promoted on Facebook by Kuber's Warrior, a far-right organization named after a seventh century Bulgar leader. In videos from the event, chants of "Bulgaria for Bulgarians" and "Refugees out!" can be heard from the small crowd.

In a Facebook post, Carlos Contrera, a member of the nationalist VMRO-Bulgarian National Movement, called the planned shelters "social scourges," writing that "eventually the centers in question will become a magnet for all kinds of criminals posing as refugees."

On October 10, a day after the protest in Knyazhevo, GERB announced that the party will submit a proposal to Sofia's city council to annul the July decision -- which most GERB members did not vote on -- approving the project.

Opponents have accused GERB of playing a cynical political game.

"Playing on the fears of Sofia residents is a key strategy for some political groups," wrote Tsvetomir Petrov, chairman of the city council and member of the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria and a local coalition, Save Sofia.

But even before a vote on GERB's proposal could take place, the two districts where the centers would be located -- Oborishte and Vitosha -- both governed by a coalition of We Continue the Change, Democratic Bulgaria, and Save Sofia -- announced they were withdrawing their offer.

Milena Aleksieva, acting mayor of Oborishte, told RFE/RL its decision was linked to the sudden controversy over the project, which she said was the result of "preelection hysteria."

"These children deserve both care and attention and from a purely humane point of view we should be able to help them," she said. "The problem is really the preelection hysteria that has surrounded this project."