The Advocates for Human Rights and the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation (BGRF) are pleased to announce the release of a new publication, Implementation of the Bulgarian Law on Protection against Domestic Violence: A Human Rights Report. On March 16, 2005, Bulgaria passed a new law to combat domestic violence. Since then, thousands of victims of domestic violence have come forward to use the law to obtain protection against their abusers. In 2006 alone, more than 2,000 cases of domestic violence under the new law were brought before the courts, resulting in 800 orders for protection. Throughout 2007, the Advocates and BGRF conducted human rights monitoring to investigate implementation of the law by all principals, including the state, police, judges, prosecutors, media and NGOs. This report presents the findings and makes recommendations to improve implementation of the law. This report was produced with the support of the Oak Foundation and UNIFEM. Please click here to read the report.