Tirana, May 16, 2023 – Schools are not just buildings! They are social communities that build citizenship through knowledge, education, and inclusiveness! Every school must be safe for every child, while no two children are alike! Therefore, governing bodies and teachers must be able and prepared to respond to the realities of children, their difficulties, and the problems of the community where they live! In addition, they must be equipped with skills, tools, and mechanisms to ease the burden of the problems that children bring to school.
Today, a teenager in Gramsh was killed a few meters away from the school where he was studying! The media and interviewees stated that the boy had stepped in between two teenagers who were fighting, to stop the fight. He is today a hero of all the students, young people, and the community where he lives, because he dared to act to prevent a brawl that the school was unable to resolve!
For us as CRCA/ECPAT Albania, it was really hard to comprehend the statements of the national education authorities, which did not focus on the fact that the school did not provide protection, security and guarantees for reporting a conflict among young people, nor conflict resolution, but they hurried to declare that the incident happened outside the school yard, that is, on the street, as if the children had not left the school a few minutes before and as if the tragic fight had not been started first at the school!
This kind of abdication of the responsibilities from the school, including the role that should be played by the central education authorities, does not help to solve the problems, on the contrary it passes them on to small communities, families, parents, and children, leaving them all victims of a crime without a solution! Aren’t the local and central authorities the ones who should support families, children, and parents, who despite what happened, they need to show that there are solutions?! Don’t the central and local authorities have the duty to analyse this event with the loss of a child’s life, and beyond responsibility, to provide solutions to the community?!
Wrong approaches do not help anyone! It is because of this that as CRCA/ECPAT Albania we invite the Ministry of Education and Minister Kushi to reflect on this event. We recommend that she sits down and talk with the children, child protective services, CSOs and the community, and together we can re-dimension the role that the school should play towards child safety, in dealing with male aggressiveness, strengthening communication and positive behaviours among teenagers, and above all reinforce the important role of the teaching staff in the community, when crimes against children or the family occur.
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