TIRANA, Oct. 5 – The People’s Advocate (Ombudsman) and the OSCE Presence in Albania organized this week a roundtable on the human rights situation of people deprived of their liberty in the state institutions in 2015.
Deputy Head of Presence Robert Wilton said that, in recent years, the protection of the rights of people in detention in Albania has improved significantly, in many ways thanks to the People’s Advocate incessant work.
However, he said, overcrowding remains a concern, which challenges the prison administration, threatens the rights of persons deprived of their liberty, might be conducive to inappropriate treatment of prisoners, and seriously weakens the possibility or rehabilitation.
He added that another particular concern that the OSCE Presence has raised is the treatment of detainees with mental health issues. “It is crucial that they are treated outside the prison system as determined by international and national legislation,” Wilton said. He said he hoped that the efforts of the government to build a new hospital for persons with mental health problems who have committed crimes and have been ordered to undergo obligatory treatment by the court would soon be fruitful.
People’s Advocate Igli Totozani also dwelled on the issues of overcrowding and detainees with mental health issues. He said that despite the opening of new facilities the annual average of overcrowding is 25 per cent, a reality which he said must be changed.
He said that the current treatment of the detainees with mental health issues is in flagrant violation of the human rights, adding that the law has clearly provided for a special medial institution, followed by an agreement between the Justice and Health Ministries in 2014, which has not implemented so far.
Totozani praised the co-operation with Justice Minister Ylli Manjani, stressing that, unlike before, now there is a positive will to solve the problems.
