Prison Administration and other Governmental and non-governmental institutions in Albania will work together with the Council of Europe towards improving the protection of prisoners’ rights and supporting their rehabilitation and reintegration back into society. The first Steering Committee (SC) meeting took place on 18 November 2019 in Tirana, marking the beginning of the implementation of this new country-specific Action.

The meeting gathered important representatives from the General Directorate of the Prison Administration, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, National Preventive Mechanism, NGOs and international partners engaged in the penitentiary reform, to discuss and take important decisions about the implementation of the Action during the next 3 years.

Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Tirana, Mr Olsi Dekovi, and the Human Rights Task Manager from the European Union Delegation to Albania, Mr Erol Akdag, addressed the meeting, highlighting the main achievements within the first phase of the Horizontal Facility project, and setting the grounds for a closer cooperation between the parties during this second implementation phase. The participants discussed and agreed on future efforts and concrete interventions that would make the Action beneficial to the penitentiary development needs and sustainable in terms of results. In this framework the Action will continue to support the enhancing of the capacities of prison staff, including managerial, rehabilitation and health care staff, to apply human rights standards in their daily work. As a result, the SC members adopted the Action’s 6-month workplan, thus setting the key interventions and milestones to be closely followed in the next months.

The SC meeting is a part and it was organized under the auspices of the Action “Enhancing the protection of the human rights of prisoners in Albania”, which is part of the “Horizontal Facility Programme for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”, funded by European Union and the Council of Europe, and implemented by Council of Europe.