Bulgarian Participation in the Congress of the International Society of Family Law (ISFL), 2017

From 25 to 29 July 2017, the XVI World Congress of the International Society of Family Law (ISFL) was held in Amsterdam, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The theme of the forum was "Family Law and Family Realities". 
The International Society was founded at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in April 1973 on the initiative of Prof. Zeev Falk (Hebrew University, Israel). The first world conference was held two years later in West Berlin with the participation of 200 scholars and government representatives. The participants in the congress in Amsterdam numbered 350. 
At the forum in Amsterdam a number of questions were discussed relating to the impact of the rapidly changing realities on family law. The papers and discussions addressed the needs of different types of families, such as married and de facto, with and without children, blended, extended and same-sex, as well as the needs of individual family members (e.g. adults, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities and members of sexual minorities) in diverse social, cultural and religious environments. For more on the Congress programme, see http://acfl.nl/en/isfl-2017-world-congress/
Assoc. Prof. Velina Todorova of the Department of Civil Law, Institute for the State and the Law – BAS, who has been a member of the ISFL since 1997, presented a paper at the plenary session on 28 July, entitled "Guardianship and Curatorship over Children: Challenges in the Context of Migration". On the same day, Assoc. Prof. Todorova also moderated one of the afternoon sessions, entitled "Parental Rights and Responsibilities and the Rights of the Child in a Cultural and Religious Context".