Child Prostitution Decreasing in Bulgaria

On the 8th of June it was announced by government officials that child prostitution cases in Bulgaria went down by 40 per cent over the last two years.
"In 2005, 521 cases of underage girls who prostitute were registered, while the number in 2006 was 308," the Ministry of the Interior's Rumen Petkov told the National Assembly during the regular parliamentary control.
Balkan Insight found similar numbers provided by the National Statistical Institute. It reported that in 2005, 501 underage persons went through government facilities known as "children's pedagogical rooms" for prostitution and homosexuality, while in 2006, that number fell to 400, yielding a 20 per cent decrease.
"The problem with these statistics is that they present only registered cases of children whom the police worked with, but the actual numbers are probably higher," Lydia Zagorova of the Neglected Children Society, one of the main groups working in this area in Bulgaria and a member of ECPAT International, told Balkan Insight. Neither her organisation, nor the Bulgarian office of the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, were able to provide any official statistics on child prostitution.
The decrease in child prostitution was confirmed by the 2006 US Department of State Report on Human Rights Practises in Bulgaria, which stated that "the Ministry of Interior identified 255 children as 'at risk' of being forced into prostitution between January and October, compared to 398 in 2005."
While child prostitution is on the decrease, a hurdle in the fight against it seems to be a lack of a legal framework. The Bulgarian judiciary does not offer a definition of child prostitution and does not define prostitution in general as a crime, Petkov pointed out. Mentioning the strict laws against kidnapping for prostitution purposes that are currently in place, Petkov added "Bulgaria is not considered a destination for so-called 'child sex tourism'."
Zagorova pointed out that the issue currently receives little government attention or public debate. She hoped that future cooperation between government and non-government agencies will shed more light and bring measures for addressing the problem.

You can read more on the website of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network