Where is my mom ? Children left behind in Bulgaria

This is a short video about Pamela who lives with her 2 sisters and her grandmother in Borovan, Bulgaria. Her parents both work in the Netherlands and can only visit them once a year for Christmas, this being obviously difficult for the sisters. Most of her friends have already left the village to join their parents abroad.

There are no official statistics about the number of children left behind in Bulgaria. The only attempt to forecast more accurate data was set out in the UNICEF report “Children left behind, 2014”. According to this report, at the time of its publication, between 20% and 25% of children in Bulgaria had one or both parents living and working abroad, with the percentage among Roma children being over 37%.

Many Bulgarian parents, whose absence from their homes is most often due to short or longer-term labour migration, leave their children in the care of other adults or include children in pendulum migration. The phenomenon is widespread throughout the country and is observed among all communities regardless of social and economic status or ethnic origin. While working abroad might bring improvement to the financial situation of the family in the long run, leaving the children behind without a reinforced protection network might put certain categories of children in a situation of risk, especially in communities with limited access to basic services.

Video made by Lina KRIVOSHIEVA -Two Dogs Two Cats Video Production funded by the ROMACT Programme.