Photo Credit: Women's Legal Rights Initiative   USAID-supported Women’s Legal Rights Initiative gathered 20,000 signatures from Albanian citizens demanding protection of women in the home. After the passage of the law in December, USAID assisted the Center of Legal Civic Initiatives to carry on the lobbying and awareness campaign against domestic violence. The Center provides assistance to an average of 4 to 5 women every day.

Domestic Violence Hit by Citizens Petition

Domestic Violence Hit by Citizens Petition

20,000 citizens petition for legal protection for women in Albania

Today, unfortunately like so many days, lawyers at Tirana’s Center of Legal Civic Initiatives in Tirana are providing legal advice to women hoping to escape the physical and emotional abuse in their lives.

“We see an average of a half a dozen new women every day at the Center seeking legal means to protect themselves,” said Aurela Anastasi, a law professor and executive director of the Center for Legal Civic Initiatives. “With the new law, this Center now has the power to do something to help them.”

Surveys conducting by the Center indicate that approximately 15% of rural women and girls suffer from physical violence with more than half reporting economic or psychological violence. In December 2006, Albania, one of the last European countries without a domestic violence law, passed the law “On Measures against Violence in Family Relations" in the Albanian legislature.

USAID’s two-year Women’s Legal Rights Initiative was instru-mental in drafting the law, raising public awareness, and organizing the citizens’ petition which allowed the law to be brought to Parliament for consideration. The project collected 20,000 signatures from Albanians that believed it important for the law to protect the rights of women in and outside the home.

“This law on domestic violence is the first and, until now, the only time that a law has been approved after being introduced through a citizens petition of 20,000 signatures,” explains Anastasi. “It’s real evidence of democracy at work.”

Since June when the law was promulgated, victims have been able to get protection and restraining orders from the courts in normal, civil proceedings. These orders are then served on the abuser. If the abuser violates the order, he can be arrested and prosecuted.

Following the passage of the law, USAID’s FORECAST program provided a grant to the Center of Legal Civic Initiatives to support a concerted lobbying campaign to further public awareness, develop the protection order forms, and conduct trainings on the forms of legal professionals in Tirana and Shkodra.