*Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at the Regional Forum Promoting Implementation of the Istanbul Convention which criminalizes violence against women and girls:

First of all, I would like to congratulate a lot two girls, who made it much more difficult to take the floor after them. It is a very good challenge, thank you very much!

I would like to begin with very good news. When the Istanbul Convention was signed in 2011, there were no news reports to announce the event in our country and few days later local polls were held in 384 local administrative units, so in communes and municipalities, and only five out of 384 candidates were women. Few days ago, the United Nations released a listing of governments with most balanced gender-equality and I am proud to state that Albania ranked among the top five countries, along with exemplary nations like Sweden, Finland etc.

This is already Albania’s highest ranking in the world ranking among the world’s 34 countries regarding the gender-equality.

We have come a long way. Around 50% of the city councils are composed of women and we have succeeded in reaching a perfect balance of 50-50 representation among the local representatives in the city councils. The government is composed of more women than man, and around 60 percent of the executive positions in the public administration are held by women.

All this is indeed a merit and a deserved accomplishment, because given my own experience I can tell you that if you want to talk, engage in long discussions without doing anything at all, then you can do it simply in the presence of men, but, if you really want to work and if you wish to see things done, then it is better to choose women because they are a bigger guarantee. The same goes over men, as experience has shown, they say always “yes”, yet they fail to do what they are supposed to do. When asked “why you didn’t do this and that,” they say “I just simply thought…” and name a long list of familiar and unfamiliar excuses. When you tell a woman that she should do something, she might well say “no”, because it might not be the right way to do it, but when they say “yes”, then they do it for sure. When deadlines near, you would never hear sentences like “I thought it was not the right way to do this.” So they simply deliver on whatever task they have been asked to perform.

I think we’re in the right position to date, but only compared to the starting point and not where we should be and where we should reach to. To me it is quite clear and I am aware that is just the tip of the iceberg. But what lies under the water surface is much more complicated and there is no good news. There is no good news regarding the women’s situation, let’s say, at the society’s average class. The situation is not the one it should be. Certainly, domestic violence is a pressing issue and a very important in general, yet it is still a serious problem in Albania.

In the meantime, all this has to do with a kind of paradoxical return of the ghosts of the past, and not completely in an unexplainable way. Following the collapse of communism in Albania, the country went through a long period of mandatory emancipation, we saw many parts of the past returning to the present, and we saw many old habits that were inherited prior to the Communism regime too. By reclaiming space, or regaining strength and empowerment in the society, practically we might say we ushered in a transition period, with many women accomplishing a lot in their lives thanks to the new opportunities and freedom, becoming public figures, entrepreneurs and so on and so forth, but at the same time we experienced the insane inflation of ill competition.

It would suffice to look at the communist-era paintings, movies and other artistic productions and it would be really hard to distinguish between women and men in terms of physical appearance. Let’s say that women resembled a lot to men physically and this was part of the whole the then ideological effort to combat old habits and take women out of the shadow, fighting at the same time the feminine looks of women. We have gone through this, mainly in the country’s remote and rural areas, where old habits have resurfaced, with certain families preventing their daughters to attend school, and their husbands preventing them from finding a job. All this led to considerable amount of domestic violence.

Now it is time to push for more in this direction and we cannot simply afford to be complacent about the fact that there are more women than men in our government, or in executive positions in the public administration, or about having an equal fifty-fifty representation in city councils and so on and so forth. Because, actually there is another side of the medal, really a dark side we should strongly fight. We are working together with our friends, with Luigi, a human rights champion and representative of the European Union, who praises and vigorously defends the founding principles and values of the European Union based on the gender equality. We are working hard to advance the national legislation.

In the meantime, we are experiencing a crucial moment for our country, as well as an immediate and  dramatic turn in terms of the justice system reform, which is quite clear about the future we are seeking to build, but we cannot also afford some peaceful sleep at the moment, because we are proceeding with the process of vetting of prosecutors and judges, who will be going through this process. It is a detailed, deep and very tough process, which is practically yielding a radical and major cleaning situation. Some 68 out of 180 high-level judges and prosecutors, including former chief prosecutors, chief justices and Supreme Court judges, have failed to pass the vetting process and have therefore removed from the country’s justice system. In the meantime, there is a number of judges and prosecutors who still hold their positions, although being fully aware they won’t pass the vetting process and therefore are acting as if it was their last supper and are seeking to grab whatever they can.

This rotten justice process has created a long chain of tragic events, pressure and violence. We have witnessed unbearable and unjustifiable cases with women being violated for a second time by the court, after being brutally violated at their homes. And this has happened just because of the justice system that has been biased. If we are to consider the percentage of women wining a case against their husbands or partners in the Albanian courts one should feel really ashamed.

What I think is really important is that we now move to a whole new level in terms of the legislation, the regulation framework and the tools to combat domestic violence.

We are working on that and will soon come up with a stiff proposal regarding violators and the domestic violence perpetrators.

I fully agree with all the efforts and all resources made available through women’s treatment centers, helping domestic violence victims. But in the meantime we should also mull plans to establish re-education centres for men who violate women so that it is no longer as easy as that for such individuals who escape unscathed just because of a rotten justice system. But of course, a middle way also should be found, making sure that these men are held accountable and take responsibility for any wrongdoing they commit against their wives, daughters or other family members. It is crucially important that we take steps forward regarding this issue and take this agenda forward as it will yield very good results, but it includes some negative aspects too. So, this is not just an isolated matter around women only who are subjected to various forms of violence. It certainly has an impact and broader influence on the whole society, either in the social and economic aspect, in the aspect of security and so on and so forth. I think we should do a lot more in this respect and we should do more to make sure that men are held responsible and this very important.

Last, but not least, I think we should provide women with direct and immediate protection and we should not wait for the process to go on indefinitely. Because the process is time consuming, not fully guaranteed and discouraging too. I receive a lot of text messages from the ordinary people on my phone. We live in a tiny country and we are all relatives. We all get to know each other and believe me every single day I receive a text message from one woman at least who is under threat, who feels alone, abandoned, put aside, and who feels that no protection is being provided and that is very worrying. And it’s not enough to just tell her go and report it. We have to provide security and direct support. And I think that men suspects who are likely to behave in this way should be forced to leave their home for a while and be isolated. This is my opinion and point of view. Where and how, this is a very big question.

You can find out “How” if you really want to combat violence committed by men. You would find it for sure. So your suggestions will be very valuable. I am ready to support you and you should need to find a way how to do this. There are of course many ways to do so and we are thinking about them and it has all to with the fact how much we are ready to raise the stakes and how much ready we are to amend the legislation, stipulating that violence against women is a gravely serious crime. It is not a petty crime committed when two men grapple and violate physically each other. When a man violates a woman, this act should be qualified as a serious crime.

It is of course much easier to say rather than do it, but I am pretty sure there is a number of good practices we can take into consideration. The only problem I find in all of this is that this process takes time. As we speak here, I am sure somewhere there is a woman who is going through sufferings, is weeping and is given no chance to cry out, ask for help and make her voice heard.

It is very good to make use of this application, but of course we need more time. The question is what should we do now? We should just do it at any cost. We will soon – let’s say in one month or a month and a half – table a proposal we are already working on. It might turn out to be a controversial proposal, but I think it would be better to forward a proposal rather than standing still and simply be complacent, feel happy and feel great about coming together in conferences, workshops and projects, which of course are good ones, because it is much better to be here rather than in Parliament, yet they are not enough.

To conclude, forget what Eleanor Roosevelt has said: “In the end, the law represents as sum up of our fears.”

Therefore, we should adopt a law that sumps up all men’s fears so that women are safe.

Thank you!

* Simultaneous interpretation