[2][3] An NGO disputes this claim and estimates that the number of the Romani in Bulgaria is twice as high, stating their population grows by 35,000 a year.

[25] The unemployed receive more financial aid than other citizens, especially for children, which may have prompted the higher birth rates of the Romani.

[28][29] Romani are avoided by the majority traditionally, especially for marriage, however, there are ethnically mixed people with Gypsy and Bulgarian or Turk parents who are called жоревци "zhorevtsi" (from the common name George).

[31] The rights of the Romani people in the country are also represented by political parties and cultural organizations, most notably the Civil Union "Roma".

Noted Roma from Bulgaria include musicians Azis, Sofi Marinova and Ivo Papazov, surgeon Aleksandar Chirkov, politicians Toma Tomov and Tsvetelin Kanchev, footballer Marian Ognyanov, and 1988 Olympic boxing champion Ismail Mustafov.

The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.

[8] The Romani people emigrated from Northern India,[36][37] presumably from the northwestern Indian states of Rajasthan[36][37] and Punjab,[36] possibly as early as 600 A.D.

Bulgarian ethnologists Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov assert that no direct evidence indicates when precisely the Romani first appeared in Bulgaria.

"In addition, during the 14th and 15th centuries, Muslim Romani arrived in Bulgaria with the Ottoman rule, serving as auxiliaries, craftsmen, musicians and other professions.

[45][46] Unlike the Ottoman Empire's other subjects in the millet system, Romani were governed based on their ethnicity, not their religious affiliation.

[50] Ottoman imperial assembly registers from 1558 to 1569 characterize the Romani as ehl-i fesad (people of malice), charging them with crimes such as prostitution, murder, theft, vagrancy and counterfeiting.

[56] In Ottoman archives from the 18th and 19th centuries, a special sub-group of 4 clans of Turkish-speaking Nomads of Alevism faith, who did not speak Romany was mentioned, namely the Turkmen Kiptileri.

[70] In a UNDP/ILO survey, Bulgarian Romani identified unemployment, economic hardship and discrimination in access to employment as major problems.

The Council of Europe body ECRI stated in its June 2003 third report on Bulgaria that Romani encounter "serious difficulties in many spheres of life", elaborating that: "The main problems stem from the fact that the Roma districts are turning into ghettos.

[...] Most Roma neighbourhoods consist of slums, precariously built without planning permission on land that often belongs to the municipalities [...].

"[71]To which the Bulgarian government answered officially in the same document: ECRI has correctly observed that members of the Roma community encounter "serious difficulties" "in many spheres of life".

The rest of this paragraph, however, regrettably contains sweeping, grossly inaccurate generalizations ... Due to various objective and subjective factors, many (but by no means all!)

“…Romani mahala-dwellers are still captives of the past, holding onto and behaving according to preconceptions about the socialist welfare state that clash with the modern realities of a market economy and privatisation".

(Skopje Report, p.6)[72] More concretely, the allegation that the people living in these districts "have no access to basic public services" is largely inaccurate.

This attitude could at least in part be explained by the fact that “…Romani mahala-dwellers believe they have rights as citizens to electricity and other services, and that the state has an obligation to provide and to a large extent to subsidize them" (Skopje Report, p. 7).

"[71]A monitoring report by the Open Society Institute found that Romani children and teenagers are less likely to enroll in primary and secondary schools than the majority population and less likely to complete their education if they do.

[73] The report also indicates that Romani children and teenagers attend de facto segregated "Roma schools" in majority-Romani neighbourhoods and villages.

These "Roma schools" offer inferior quality education; many are in bad physical condition and lack necessary facilities such as computers.

According to the rules valid for all children irrespective of their ethnic origin, admittance to any public school was linked administratively to the domicile of the family.

According to reports of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), Romani made up half the number of students in schools for children with intellectual disabilities and about two-thirds of the students of the boarding schools, where the BHC found a variety of human rights abuses, including physical violence.