| Project |
Albanian Helsinki Committee Starts One-Year Project At
the Lezha Detention Institution
With U.S. Department of State Support |
|
Implementation
period: |
May 2006-May
2007 |
|
Funded by: |
U.S. Department of State |
The Albanian Helsinki
Committee (AHC) monitors respect for human rights and freedoms
and reacts for their reinstatement; sensitizes citizens on the
protection of their rights and freedoms; helps improve
legislation and practice of enforcement of laws through critique
and recommendations during the drafting and implementation
phases.
The AHC mission
includes respect for the rights of detainees and persons
sentenced to imprisonment and their treatment according to
international standards and domestic legislation. The rights of
detainees and convicts are an important part of fundamental
human rights. AHC has worked since 1998 in the area of the
pretrial detention system through monitoring, awareness,
training, counseling, and lobbying programs, legal critique, and
publications.
With financial
support from the Human Rights and Democracy Fund of the U.S.
Department of State, in close cooperation with the Ministry of
Justice and the General Directory of Prisons (GDP), AHC will
begin in May the $50,000 one-year project to increase the
awareness and knowledge of human rights and enforcement of laws
among the detention administration in the Lezhë prison.
Some of the main
objectives of planned activities are:
-
Improve human
rights standards in the pilot detention institution;
-
Increase the
level of theoretical and particularly practical
knowledge of the detention section administration in
Lezhë;
-
Encourage and
support a change of mentalities in the treatment of
detainees;
-
Enable the
detention administration to take initiatives for
drafting an action plan that would make possible running
detention facilities from a human rights standpoint; and
-
Make
detainees aware of their rights and protection
mechanisms of these rights; offer detainees at this
institution free legal counsel.
AHC will engage in
the project foreign experts with extensive experience in running
penitentiary institutions, qualified lawyers in penal law, human
rights activists and observers, and a dedicated and experienced
staff.
One of the goals of
the project is that the Lezhë detention facility become a model
for other detention facilities under the responsibility of the
Ministry of Justice in terms of good management of penitentiary
institutions where detainees’ human rights and dignity are
respected.
