The Impact Assessment Report has been drafted under the project “Scaling up a sustainable model communities living in non-regulated areas to improve their living conditions – SCALE IT UP”. The project focuses on the need for improving the knowledge and competencies with respect to housing issues and ensuring equal access to public services among municipal staff and contributes to their active involvement in the process of overcoming the existing stereotypes related to the Roma communities and building mutual trust.
The advice in the present guide relates primarily to how to speak to a moveable middle audience among the majority population. That is, an audience who does not, at first glance, consider themselves to be directly affected by the harms inflicted on the marginalised group in question.
Problems in the criminal justice system in Bulgaria have disparate impact on particular groups. This applies to both police custody and pre-trial proceedings. Bulgaria is unique in the disproportionately high number of Roma people either accused or convicted in criminal proceedings. Data obtained in this research allows us to measure the unequal treatment of, as well as the disparate effects that provisions, measures and policies have on the three main ethnic groups in Bulgaria (Bulgarians, ethnic Turks and Roma), as well as on foreign nationals, women and juveniles.
In Bulgaria and Croatia, Roma routinely experience discrimination, usually fuelled by negative attitudes and prejudices, in a variety of areas of their lives from an early age. Despite the high number of well documented occurrences, incidents of discrimination typically go unreported. Roma often think that it is not worth reporting their case as it would not change anything, while others fear that the situation would only become worse. See more.
by Roma Policy Lab · Published 12.01.2023
· Last modified 16.03.2023
The Roma Early Childhood Inclusion in Bulgaria (RECI+) report has been prepared by Foundation Open Society Institute – Sofia and focuses on the situation in education and care, healthcare and social services for the Bulgarian children of Roma ethnicity aged 0 to 8. The report was drafted at the initiative and with the support of Open Society Foundations, the Roma Education Fund and UNICEF and is part of a series of similar surveys conducted in the countries from Central and Eastern Europe.
by Roma Policy Lab · Published 16.11.2022
· Last modified 17.11.2022
The notion that Roma do not work has long been disproved by the trends in the labor market in Bulgaria. The data for this is there: between 2011 and 2019, the share of working Roma has doubled. This is shown by a nationally representative study from 2019 ocommissioned by the Trust for a Social Achievement, dedicated to educational achievements in the Roma community.
by Roma Policy Lab · Published 15.11.2022
· Last modified 17.11.2022
The Media Literacy Index is produced within the European Policies Initiative (EuPI) of the Open Society Institute – Sofia. The index assesses the resilience potential to fake news in 41 European countries, using indicators for media freedom, education and trust in people. As the indicators have different importance, they are assigned different weight in the model.
Anyone who has tried to research, write or think about the situation of the Roma in Bulgaria has come across an increasing amount of information, which is often fragmented and contradictory. How many and...
The textbook Precarious Housing in Europe – A critical guide on cross-cutting issues around precarious housing in the Old Continent is now printed and available online to provide a profound and solid synthesis and analysis of the critical elements of housing precariousness. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 – “Informal settlements” and “Homelessness” – were drafted by the research team of the Open Society Institute – Sofia and present the scope, causes and dynamics of homelessness and illegally built housing and settlements such as migrant camps, neighbourhoods with a high concentration of poverty and often ethnically segregated and marginalized urban areas.
The “10 Keys” is a very handy practical communication manual on how to create consistent and engaging human rights messages. The manual is available in all EU languages plus in Albanian, Macedonian, Serbian, Turkish, and Russian.