The number of children forcibly displaced from their homes has doubled in the past decade, outpacing efforts to include and protect refugee and internally displaced children. The war in Ukraine forced more than 2 million Ukrainian children to leave the country and displaced more than 1 million children within Ukraine.
The number of child refugees and migrants also reached a new record of 17.5 million, and this number does not even include those newly displaced in 2023, including due to the conflict in Sudan. UNICEF estimates that to date more than 940,000 children have been displaced by the crisis in Sudan.
In Bulgaria in 2022, the State Agency for Refugees (SAR) under the Council of Ministers registered a record number of applications for international protection: 20,407, of which 5,141 were from children, including 3,348 unaccompanied and separated children from their families (3,278 boys and 70 girls). In addition, 160 899 Ukrainian refugees have received temporary protection in Bulgaria since the beginning of the conflict. Of these, 589 are unaccompanied children.
The data shows an increase of 86% compared to 2021 and thus represents the largest number of asylum seekers since the establishment of the asylum system in Bulgaria in 1993.
222 100 children applied for asylum in the European Union in 2022. 19.0% or nearly a fifth of them were unaccompanied and minor applicants. In 2022, the largest share of unaccompanied minors in the EU is in: Bulgaria (66.3%), followed by Austria (59.0%), Slovakia (51.8%) and the Netherlands (47.1%) (Eurostat data).
The increasing number of asylum seekers is an additional burden for the Bulgarian state in view of the insufficient availability of social services that meet the specific needs of vulnerable refugee children, especially unaccompanied and separated children.
From January 2023 to the end of May, 871 applications from unaccompanied and separated children were submitted in Bulgaria.
Despite the progress achieved by the Bulgarian authorities in the last few years, there are still challenges related to the provision of adequate care, protection and access to social services for refugee and migrant children in Bulgaria.
Source: UNICEF Bulgaria