Violence and sexual harassment of children is an unacceptable reality and despite all measures to protect children and adolescents, sexual predators for a variety of reasons, legal, social and political, continue to cause significant damage to the lives and well-being of children in Albania. and in the World.
According to the BECAN study, in Albania over 11% of children are victims of violence and sexual harassment. While law enforcement and the judiciary deal with prosecuting the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, social services for the rehabilitation of victims often do not receive the services they deserve.
Based on this, at the beginning of 2019, CRCA / ECPAT Albania, the leading organization in the country for children’s rights, with an experience of over 22 years in this field, for the first time in Albania, opened the National Center for Child Protection and Adolescents from Sexual Violence – as a new model of prevention and treatment of sexual violence, with a special focus on girls and young women, but without neglecting at any time sexual violence against boys.
We are working with some of the most serious partners in Europe and America, to build in Albania the model of a single Center of social services and legal protection for children and adolescents victims of violence and sexual harassment, in everyday life and on the Internet, based on the Barnahus model first implemented in Iceland and which is an honor to the models recommended by the Lanzarote Convention Committee of the Council of Europe
Albania, due to the existence of parallel systems of social protection, child protection, violence against women and girls, as well as uncoordinated systems of law enforcement and justice, due to legal gaps, is currently impossible to build a coordinated system of responding to sexual violence for children and adolescents, so we are working to facilitate this process with all our national and international partners, until we achieve the creation of the model.
The initiative “Building a coordinated system of response to sexual violence against children and adolescents in Albania” has at its center the provision of free psychological and legal services for children victims of sexual violence, modeling of social and legal protection services, the establishment of a national alliance against violence in Albania, supporting legal initiatives for the protection of victims of sexual crimes and strengthening the capacity of law enforcement agencies and child protection services to protect, rehabilitate and prevent sexual violence. A special component of the initiative is dedicated to online safety against children and sexual crimes against them online.
Abuse and neglect are closely linked to unhealthy behavior in children and young people, and there are direct or subsequent psychological and psycho-social complications. Particularly due to the ‘cycle of violence’ phenomenon, domestic violence tends to reproduce itself. Interrupting this cycle helps significantly and effectively in eradicating these unhealthy behaviors in children and adults.
Issues related to child abuse and neglect transcend national borders, affecting both developing and developed countries. However, data and legislation in force on violence against children are often quite weak, mainly due to inconsistencies in the classification of child abuse and deficiencies in research methodology which could produce internationally valid and comparable data. . In the Balkan area, in particular, there are no valid and consistent data available on the magnitude of this phenomenon at the national level for the general population.
The BECAN study will provide the basis for the harmonization of procedures for reviewing cases of abuse and neglect in the Balkan region and therefore the implementation of this study will present valuable, reliable and comparable data. However, the assistance of the BECAN study is expected to be much broader, as it will help to establish a permanent and unified system in terms of mechanisms for mapping and reviewing the scope of action but also in relation to the analysis of cases. abuse and neglect monitored and detected. Avoiding inconsistent diagnostic processes and establishing a common methodology in data collection will enable the planning of appropriate preventive measures, appropriate intervention strategies, evaluation of initiatives undertaken, and updating of practices and policies.
The development of networking of organizations at the national level, of professionals and experts for the prevention of abuse and neglect, is a step of strategic importance in guiding the implementation of the project objectives. The communication of the cells that will take place during the project in each of the participating countries, will build national working groups that will contribute mainly to the dissemination of information produced in the continuation of the BECAN study and also to the collection of registered cases of abuse and negligence. Both are activities in which we invite you to participate, according to the objectives stated by your organization and the activities in which you are currently engaged.
Participation in the National Network for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect will be an interactive process, which is expected to benefit each participant in terms of developing partnerships, achieving the objectives of the respective organization, sharing expertise on prevention issues. abuse and negligence, as well as access to a wide range of very important information. Based on future research results, participants will be able to change their goals, update initiatives, enrich and improve activities in promoting mental health and child well-being.
In more specific terms, the benefits to organizations participating in the National Network can be described as follows: