EU to invest 1.2 million euros to strengthen democracy and human rights in Albania

TIRANA, March 8 – The European Union has signed ten contracts with a variety of Albanian non-governmental organizations to support vulnerable groups and promote their rights.
The actions supported include representation of rural women in political life, access to justice for children and Roma, access to economic opportunities for victims of domestic violence, access to services for people with disabilities, respect of rights in places of detention, and services for children and youth with autism.
The projects, worth a total of 1.2 million euros, will be under one of the EU’s financial instruments to promote democratization and fundamental rights globally – the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, the EU delegation to Tirana said in a press release.
“The 2010 Opinion of the European Commission on Albania’s membership application highlighted 12 areas that Albania needs to address with primacy in order to be considered for candidate status,” the press release noted. “The 12 Priorities include ‘take concrete steps to reinforce the protection of human rights, notably for women, children and Roma, and to effectively implement anti-discrimination policies’ and ‘improve treatment of detainees in police stations, pre-trial detention and prisons; strengthen judicial follow-up of cases of ill-treatment and improve application of recomme-ndations of the Ombudsman in this field.'”
The priorities reflect the EU’s fundamental principles and values which aspiring members are required to actively adopt too. “Civil society organizations are key to organizing and articulating the demand for democracy and human rights from people to governments, especially if the breach of rights is such that it disables people from effectively demanding them,” said the head of the EU Delegation to Tirana, Ambassador Ettore Sequi at an event presenting the new projects.
He emphasized that democracy is not a passive state of society but a form of government that needs to be actively demanded.
Since 2007, the EU has granted around 600,000 euros a year for civic action for human rights through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. Over the past five years, and through various financial instruments, the EU has supported the activities of non-governmental organisations with around 11 million euros to promote, amongst others, the respect of human rights and social inclusion, the fight against corruption, the conservation of cultural heritage, and the protection of the environment. This is alongside the other millions of euros that the EU invests to bring the best technical expertise and modern infrastructure to Albania to assist the country’s democratisation and development.