Respect the Right to Privacy

The Albanian Helsinki Committee, after becoming acquainted with the draft law on an amendment to law No. 9062, dated 08.05.2003, "Family Code of the Republic of Albania", deems it necessary to declare:        

Article 19 of the Family Code deals with the obligation of the person seeking the announcement of marriage to submit to the civil registry office clerk, besides the birth certificates of each of the future spouses, any other document necessary that is necessary and proves that there are no obstacles to a marriage bond.

In the aforementioned draft law, the requests of article 19 of the Family Code are equal to medical documents that should be submitted by the persons requesting the announcement of marriage and which certify whether they are or not ill with HIV/AIDS and Talasemy (blood illness).

The AHC, while realizing the good will of the writers of the draft law, is of the opinion that in this concrete cases, tools of a sensitizing and informing character, rather than tools of legal obligations, would be effective and preventive. In this regard, the AHC takes into consideration the conditions in the country as well as the degree of social emancipation, which leave much to be desired. The civil registry office clerk has no right to know about the intimacies or the health conditions of persons seeking to enter into a marriage bond, except for the cases specified by article 12 of the Family Code, which does prohibit marriage bond for persons suffering from severe mental illnesses or from handicapped mental development, which make them incapable of understanding the purpose of marriage.

The AHC is of the opinion that this requirement of the draft law is in contravention with article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights as well as with article 35 of the Constitution of the Republic of Albania.

The European Court of Human Rights has devoted special attention to addressing issues that deal with the respect for the right to privacy. In some of its decisions, the Court has emphasized that the obligation of the state to withhold personal data includes medical secrets. In this aspect, it would suffice to mention two decisions and one report by this Court: Decision of "Z" against Finland of 15.02.1997, the “Costello-Roberts” report against Great Britain of 25.05.2000, as well as decision on “X” against Austria, of 13.12.1979. All these emphasize exactly that: "the preservation of medical data is of fundamental importance for the exercise of the right to respect for private and family life". The decision refers to documentation on protection from the HIV virus. The preservation of medical information "represents an important principle of juridical systems of the countries of the Convention" and that "assaults on the physical integrity against the will of the interested party, even when minimal, should be considered an intrusion". The example mentioned is the "obligatory curing of the person deprived of liberty, being subject to analysis that lead to a need to conduct blood tests", etc., (see "About the European Convention", Albanian translation, 2003, p. 249, by Marek Antoni Nowicki).

The very reasons mentioned above make the AHC ask the Albanian Parliament not to approve the above draft law.