The notion of bullying will be regulated by the legislation of the Republic of Moldova now that it is introduced into the Education Code. The phenomenon will be recognized as a form of psychological violence that results in a situation of intimidation. A bill to this effect was given a second reading by Parliament, IPN reports.

Bullying is described as a form of aggressiveness that is manifested in the relations between children and refers to behaviors by which a child or a group of children hurts, damages, causes suffering and powerlessness and does damage to personal dignity in an intentional and repeated way so as to obtain social benefits, such as status, power, influence in the group of mates, prestige, popularity in the conditions in which there is an imbalance of power between the hurting child or group of children.

After the legislative amendments take effect, the responsible authorities will work out the methodological norms for implementing the law and will suggest practices for preventing and combating this phenomenon.

In the Republic of Moldova, 86.8% of the sixth-twelfth graders are affected by bullying. The situation is the most alarming in education institutions in Chisinau, where each fifth student was the victim of bullying or witnessed bullying situations.