Civil Society pushes for a new Anti - Discrimination Law

The Albanian Human Rights Group presented, Wednesday, May 3, the draft-law on discrimination in Albania to members of the civil society and NGO's in Albania. This is the first ever attempt for civil society to push for a new anti-discrimination law in the country, which has been an obligation for Albania by the recommendations of the Committee Against Discrimination in Geneva.

Albania never had an anti-discrimination law in place. Although there are no hate crimes or governmental policies supporting discrimination, the civil society strongly believes that the lack of law may increase the risk of discrimination on different grounds.

The draft which is recognised as the Anti-discrimination Law, is prepared by a team of well-known legal experts of the Albanian Human Rights Group (AHRG), Children's Human Rights Centre of Albania (CRCA) and Center for Legal and Civic Initiatives (CLCI). The initiative to prepare and present the draft-law is of the Albanian Human Rights Group and funded by the Swedish Helsinki Committee. Experts have consulted several laws from countries such as Sweden, UK, Australia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Macedonia.

The draft-law aims to ensure the equality before the law, protection and equal opportunities for every individual in Albania, independent from the origin, colour, gender, race, religion, sexual identity, disability etc. The draft-law itself is considered to facilitate the integration of European Union human rights norms into the Albanian legal standards.
During the last two weeks the law has been consulted with several major NGO's and civil society actors from minority, women, children, gay, lesbian and human rights groups. Meanwhile representatives of the Albanian Human Rights Group are consulting the draft with other civil society groups outside Tirana.

Among many issues that NGO's have discussed are related to the mechanism that will implement the law, obligation of state institutions to implement and advance the law, procedures of complaints and definitions. In the next few weeks the opinions of representatives of civil society and NGO's will be included in the final draft-law. Later in the month the draft will be presented to the Government of Albania, respectively to the Ministry of Justice for discussion and approval. Its expected that, if the draft gets the approval of the Government, the anti-discrimination law will be presented to the Parliament for approval in three months time.