Within the celebration of Children's Day, June 1, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) and UNICEF Bulgaria marked the occasion with a joint press conference.
The event was attended by the President of the NSI, Assoc. Prof. Atanas Atanasov, PhD, and Christina De Bruin, UNICEF representative for Bulgaria, while Magdalena Kostova, Director of the Demographic and Social Statistics Directorate, presented the new publication of the NSI, ‘The Children of Bulgariа’ 2022.
‘Today, for the first time, the NSI presents a special publication dedicated to children. It includes all the data we collect and publish, with the aim of putting all the information we have on children in one place and making it useful for all institutions and organizations called upon to protect children's rights and work for their better well-being. There is no more important task for us as a society than to ensure good education, sound health care, and life prospects for our children’, the NSI President said at the beginning of the press conference. He announced that the NSI will use this data to develop a national list of sustainable development indicators that will be tracked over the coming years. Some 30 governmental and non-governmental institutions are involved in the process, including the Agency for Social Assistance and the State Agency for Child Protection.
‘We hope that the tradition of summarizing data on children in a specialized publication will continue in the coming years’, said Magdalena Kostova after the presentation of the publication.
For her part, Christina de Bruin presented data from the regional report ‘The Situation of Children in Europe and Central Asia’, which is now available in Bulgarian. It provides an overview and general analysis of the situation of children in the region, including Bulgaria. ‘In today's information age, we have a unique opportunity to collect more diverse and better-quality data on a larger scale than ever before. And when we put this data in the hands of decision-makers, we can deliver more powerful and effective change for children’, added Christina de Bruin, UNICEF Country Representative for Bulgaria.
