SOFIA (AFP) – Bulgaria denied the right to education for up to 3,000 children with learning disabilities placed in institutions across the country, according to a Council of Europe decision announced yesterday in Sofia.

“The decision of the European Committee of Social Rights highlighted the failure of the Bulgarian government to provide education to the children in institutions that answers their specific needs,” lawyer Aneta Genova from the human rights watchdog Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) told a press conference. BHC data showed that only 6.2 percent of all children in the so-called “homes for mentally disabled children” receive any education at all, compared to 94 percent of all other children in Bulgaria.

“The government has thus also violated these children’s right to non-discrimination compared to other children,” Genova added.

The BHC first initiated the complaint against Bulgaria, which was then formally tabled by the Hungarian Mental Disability Advocacy Center, as no Bulgarian organization can launch complaints against its own country. As a result, the European Committee for Social Rights recommended that the Bulgarian government study the special needs of the children and the possibilities for integrating them in mainstream schools near their institutions, as well as setting reasonable deadlines for accomplishing the process of integration. Although the committee’s ruling is not legally binding, Bulgaria would have to regularly report on progress.