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Home Where we are Presence in Albania What we do
OSCE Presence in Albania

What we do

The Presence’s activities range from arms control and the fight against trafficking to electoral assistance; anti-corruption initiatives; gender mainstreaming and environmental projects; human rights protection; legislative, judicial, and media reform; and the capacity-building of law enforcement officials.
Combating human trafficking
The Presence supports Albania’s institutions and civil society by promoting a comprehensive, human rights based approach to combating trafficking in human beings. The Presence works with central and local level institutions, OSCE executive structures and partner organizations to raise the public and political profile of Albania’s anti-trafficking agenda. To assist Albania’s institutions in the implementation of international commitments, including OSCE commitments, the Presence provides tailored technical assistance and capacity building to law-enforcement, judiciary and social protection institutions. The Presence conducts research and helps in the development of policies in the field of human trafficking.
Democratization
The Presence supports a strengthened role of Albania’s Parliament and its capacity building in performing its core functions with a focus on oversight and representative ones. It offers support to parliamentarians and parliamentary committees to increase their legislative and oversight role by introducing standardized practices and tools, promoting outreach and public hearings, monitoring committee visits in different regions of the country, to help bringing greater accountability toward citizens and increased efforts to gain public trust.
Elections
Support to the electoral reform and improvement of the electoral administration are the Presence’s main goals in this area. The Presence provides technical assistance to the Assembly to bring the electoral framework fully in line with OSCE commitments; facilitates all-inclusive and constructive dialogue among political parties on election-related issues; and supports capacity building of the Central Election Commission and civil society actors. The Presence implements voter outreach campaigns for special voter groups; provides dedicated election-related training to several stakeholders; and supports the Central Election Commission’s efforts to network with international counterparts.
Good governance
The Presence promotes progress in territorial administration, advancing decentralization, and local autonomy through political support at the central level and provision of technical expertise at the local municipal level.
Gender equality
The Presence promotes civil society development and youth mainstreaming by engaging with civil society, youth leaders and activists at the central and local level through civil society forums, meetings, public activities, field visits and online events. The Presence supports women empowerment and women access to decision-making through a series of interventions ranging from donor co-ordination efforts to direct support to raise the capacities of locally elected women officials.
Human rights
The Presence works alongside national authorities, institutions, civil society organizations and citizens to strengthen fundamental human rights and freedoms in Albania. The Presence monitors the human rights situation in Albania, as well as reports and provides targeted advice to relevant authorities to ensure the efficient implementation of legislation in line with International obligations, standards and OSCE Commitments. It supports national human rights institutions in enhancing their capacities to effectively carry out their role for the protection and promotion of human rights and encourages the mainstreaming of human rights into main state policies. The Presence also supports authorities to improve detention conditions in prisons in line with international standards and good practices.
Media freedom and development
The Presence monitors and supports media freedom and media development in the country through various means ranging from upgrading professional standards to securing the legal framework in full compliance with OSCE principles. Our activities are meant to unite representatives of Albanian media outlets under the same universal rules, encouraging transparency, the right to freedom of information and opinion, supporting safety of journalists with an accent on women journalists.
Policing
To address the threat of organized crime and drug trafficking, the Presence organizes specialized training courses on the use of modern analysis techniques, proactive investigations and special investigation techniques. To promote co-operation among law enforcement agencies and strengthen their international network, the Presence supports the participation of country officials in international conferences on countering drugs trafficking and organized crime.
Border management
The Presence works with the Albanian State Police to help improve their effectiveness in combating and preventing all forms of transnational threats. A special focus is put on the Border and Migration Police, aiming to strengthen police professionalism at both institutional and operational levels and further improve democratic policing practices, in line with OSCE commitments and other international standards. The Presence supports establishing police co-operation centres, conducts simulating exercises and assessment of the green border, and upholds the regional cross-border cooperation mechanism to enhance information exchange. It also offers capacity-building for a better control of Albania’s borders against criminal activities such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, irregular migration, and foreign terrorists fighters.
Rule of law
Legislative and judicial reform, as well as the strengthening of the rule of law are at the core of the Presence’s activities to foster the advancement of the rule of law in Albania, in line with international standards and OSCE commitments. The Presence supports the implementation of the on-going justice reform through a three-pronged approach: 1) support the institutional framework of key justice sector institutions to achieve a more efficient, effective and transparent delivery of justice, and better safeguarding of fundamental rights; 2) promote collaborative approaches between justice professionals to ensure more effective justice, and 3) support inclusive and quality based law-making as well as legislative practices. The Presence also works to develop research capacities of professionals, academics and policy-makers in the field of criminology while promoting an increased involvement of communities in crime prevention and rehabilitation of offenders.
Youth
The Presence recognizes the vital role of young people as agents of change. It promotes youth engagement, youth participation and education on democracy by helping youth to reach out to parliament, international organizations and to central and local authorities. The Presence strongly encourages Albania's young people to build their leadership skills, to participate in regional and national youth exchanges and to contribute in speaking out on all issues that matter to youth. Young people are supported to give their direct contribution in a wide spectrum of issues starting from youth representation, youth engagement and youth networking, and reaching out to issues falling under the first OSCE dimension such as raising awareness and boosting communities’ responses against radicalization, and violent extremism.
Countering terrorism
To respond to the threat of terrorism, the Presence engagement involves countering financing of terrorism and addressing the issue of returning of foreign terrorist fighters family members. A well-established collaboration at local and central levels for co-ordinated, targeted and needs-based security responses plays an important role in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism and Radicalization that Leads to Terrorism. To prevent violent extremism and radicalization across Albania, Presence works closely with the national CVE Co-ordination Centre to co-ordinate, integrate and synchronize central bodies’ activities with grass root organizations, community members, religious leaders, youth, women NGOs. The Presence also supports the host country`s experts to organize and participate in regional events to ensure coherent and coordinated response to VERLT at regional level.
Reform and co-operation in the security sector
Enhancing comprehensive multi-agency co-operation and partnerships between state and non- state actors to address security challenges is one of the priority areas of the OSCE Presence in Albania. The Presence works with Albanian institutions at central and local levels to strengthen the capacities of law enforcement agencies, offer expertise on security issues, including crisis management and work directly with communities to address risks to security. On the strategic and policy level, the Presence co-operates closely with the central security players to develop security-related strategic documents and evaluate public perception on safety and security. The Presence works extensively with local partners to establish and support local safety councils in the Albanian municipalities. The Presence also pays a special attention to the empowerment of youth on security matters through delivering a series workshops on security issues and engagement of young people in local safety councils` discussions.