A ‘National Plan' for Protection against Discrimination was passed Friday on a Council of Ministers' session.

What is extraordinary in the National Plan is that apart from all the grounds of discrimination featured in the Bulgarian law for protection against discrimination, which includes sexual orientation, the new Plan also features "gender expression."

Bulgaria's engagement with issues concerning transsexual and transgender people has once again put Bulgaria a step ahead all the other countries in the European Union as very few countries are engaged with this sort of issues in their National Plans and Legislation.

The National Plan for Protection against Discrimination was prepared by a work group of experts from the national institution and non-profit organizations, including Desislava Petrova from Bulgarian Gay Organization ‘Gemini', with Resolution N:P - 63 from 2nd August 2006 of Council of Ministers.

The initiative was undertaken by Council of Ethnic and Demographic Matters.

The Plan has three specific aims for protection against discrimination, informing people about their rights and obligations aiming at a positive change in their attitudes and actions. The priorities of the Plan are: Education and trainings, further development of the anti-discriminative legislation, media coverage, creation and maintenance of national data base and thematic monitoring sessions.

The activities planned for protection against discrimination and especially the monitoring will shed light over the level of discrimination against homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals in Bulgaria.

According to official statistics 90 percent of them have been abused on the grounds of their sexuality or gender expression, over 50 percent have been subject to harassment and around 30 percent of the teenage suicide cases were committed by transsexual people.

Bulgarian Gay Organization ‘Gemini' considers the adoption of the Plan as a major step ahead for the Bulgarian government. Up to now, the initiatives featured in the plan concerning the LGBT community were handled solely by non-profit organisations, which made the results poorer.

The activities featured in the Plan for 2007 suggest direct co-operation between NGO and the state institutions.

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