The Rights of the Child in Albania: A Comparative Analysis with European Legal Standards

Abstract

Following the political transition of the early 1990s, Albania adopted new laws drawing upon the institutional and legislative models of advanced democratic societies. In the beginning the rights of the child hadn’t any special protection by the Albanian law. In 2017, Albania for the first time adopted Law No. 18/2017 on the Rights and Protection of Children and Law No. 37/2017 Code of Criminal Justice for Children. These laws came as a result of Albania’s obligation due to the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 and reflects the principles of this convention and other European Union directives on this area. Despite this significant legislative progress based on the main principle of best interest of the child and a child-friendly justice, the protection of children’s rights in Albania remains a multidimensional challenge. The protection of the rights of the child is not effective as far as annual reports on Albania from different international organizations continuously highlight a lot of persistent issues on the rights of the child, such as discrimination against ethnic minorities and children with disabilities, violence, exploitation, and hard work of children. At the same time, these reports and research studies underline that there are a lot of challenges in the implementation of the above-mentioned laws in practice. Through a descriptive and qualitative legal research method combined with a descriptive one this study analyses the Albanian legal framework on children’s rights, compares it with European acts, find legislative gaps and implementation issues presenting them in the form of some conclusions and giving some recommendations. The study concludes that Albania has made progress in alignment of legislation with European standards but still exist gaps and challenges for their implementation in practice.