A common registry used by all institutions related to the integration of children of refugees should be established, Bulgaria’s Vice President Iliyana Yotova appealed. Several days ago Bulgaria’s capital Sofia hosted an International Conference under the motto The Road of Migrants - Problems and Solutions in Their Integration through Educational Systems. The conference was held under the auspices of Bulgarian Vice-President Yotova.

In Iliyana Yotova’s view, the main focus should fall not only on the qualification of the people who work with children of refugees, but also on the content of the education itself, which is not merely a language, but also a culture, a system of values, legislation and Constitution. The accent during the conference also fell on the work with the Bulgarian education institutes, because teachers and parents of Bulgarian pupils often reject children of refugees. The solution of the problems related to the integration of children of refugees is partly linked with the urgent amendment of the Dublin Regulation, Iliyana Yotova pointed out. In her words, that regulation cannot respond to the new realities and challenges anymore and affects all countries which form the EU external borders.

Bulgaria’s Vice-President also recommended that experts should be sent in all hotspot areas, in order to provide timely assistance to those children. The integration processes would be most important to the most-vulnerable groups - the unaccompanied children.

972 out of 1,380 unaccompanied children were off Bulgaria’s educational system by February 2017. Many of them leave the reception centers after their registration, thus becoming victims of smugglers. They can be radicalized very easily of they are deprived of care and education, Vice-President Iliyana Yotova added. She pointed out that 9,000 registered children disappeared in Germany in 2016 only. We have the feeling that we are stuck in a labyrinth of different policies and forget that this is at the expense of thousands of human tragedies. Undoubtedly, the tragedy of children of refugees is the most appalling of all, Iliyana Yotova said.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov