AI Index: EUR 11/002/2006

30 March 2006

1. Introduction

One night from 7pm to 4am he was drinking and torturing me in various ways. He took the meat cleaver when I was lying on the settee, and held it against the front of my neck, just because I called my sister, and he said, "Why did you call your sister, you wanted to ask about your brother-in-law and not your sister". So he beat me very badly. I was horrified. I was pregnant just in my first months. He then took a shot of raki and sat in silence for five minutes. Then he took the cleaver, and with all the force of his upper hand pushed my head to one side and put the cleaver to my neck. I don’t know how I didn’t die from the shock. He was interrogating me trying to find out who I liked or if I had someone else. I didn’t answer his questions as I was very afraid and didn’t want to make any mistake as I knew it could end very badly. Then he took another shot and sat for another five minutes. Then he took the electrician’s pincers and pulled at my new blouse trying to get at my breast and destroyed the blouse with the pincers; then he took my hair and cut it with a bread knife; then he tried to gouge my eyes out with his finger; then he put his fist in my mouth with as much pressure as he could. All the time while he tortured me, he would stop, take a shot of raki, and then start torturing me again. I passed out at about 4.30 am. (N).

I am carrying the past around inside me. No one can see my heart, how it is inside. (P).

As in other countries throughout the world, the human rights of thousands of Albanian women are violated on a daily basis. At least a third of all women in Albania are estimated to have experienced physical violence within their families. They are hit, beaten, raped, and in some cases even killed. Many more endure psychological violence, physical and economic control.

On 23 January 2006, a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), led by the Citizen’s Advocacy Office and including the major women and children’s NGOs, presented a draft law "On Measures against Violence in Family Relations" to the Albanian parliament by citizen’s petition.

Twenty thousand Albanians had signed this petition presenting the draft law, indicating the concern of a significant sector of Albanian society about this continuing and widespread abuse of human rights, and their determination to call on the government to take action to prevent violence in the family and protect its victims. (1)

While acknowledging that the Albanian government should take action to address all forms of violence within the family, this report focuses on one aspect of family violence, the violence against women perpetrated by their husbands or other intimate partners, more commonly known as domestic violence.

In their 1996 report, Domestic Violence in Albania, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights recommended that "the Albanian government should afford victims of domestic violence meaningful access to the criminal justice system".(2) Ten years later, despite an apparent increase in reports of domestic violence in the press and in the number and capacity of women’s NGOs providing women with assistance and support, the increased documentation of domestic violence by Albanian and international NGOs and recommendations by UN treaty bodies, it appears that successive Albanian governments have continued to fail to provide women with any effective access to justice, or the right to protection from such violence.

Violence against women is an abuse of the human rights of women and girls including their rights to mental and physical integrity, to liberty and security of the person, to freedom of expression, the right to choice in marriage and the basic requirement of non-discrimination. Violence may lead to treatment amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and in extreme cases, may violate the right to life. Violence against women prevents the full enjoyment of rights and fundamental freedoms such as the rights to health and employment.

Husbands, former husbands and partners are responsible for most of these abuses, but other family members may take part in or support acts of violence, which may often be condoned by the wider community in which the woman lives. In Albania, as elsewhere, notions of tradition may all too often serve as a pretext for acts of violence against women deemed to have infringed traditional codes of behaviour, and even those who conform to their allotted role of wife and mother. Such violence against women is widely tolerated, justified and excused by reference to tradition, or a specific Albanian "mentality", even at the highest levels of the government, police and judiciary.

Individual women and women’s NGOs in Albania (3) have, over the past decade, worked to expose the culture of violence in which many women live and which is often invisible to the outside world. They have established organizations, including help-lines and shelters, to counsel women suffering domestic violence and have helped women to escape violent men. They received little or no assistance from the national authorities.