Femicide and Albania

• Pages: 7-19

7

Balkan Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

IIPCCL Publishing, Graz-Austria

ISSN 2410-759X

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

Vol. 8 No.2

September, 2022

Femicide and Albania

Borana Doçaj

Fellow at European Master in Human Rights and Democracy

(Joined degree) University of Sarajevo and University of Bologna

Abstract

In 2020, every 11 minutes a girl or woman died at the hands of an intimate partner or a family

member. In Albania, the following year, from 20 girls or women whose life ended because of

homicide, 90% were killed by an intimate partner or a family member. This article is an aempt

to contribute to the recognition of the term and frame of action of femicide and at the same

time to evaluate institutional preparedness and response to femicide in Albania. It is built on

the discussion of the disproportionate distribution of power, between femicide, gender and

legal-institutional progress. The paper concludes that, as long as the phenomenon continues,

the power of the system of rules and laws must be rectied by provisioning femicide distinctly

and treating it dierently through institutions.

Keywords: gender, imbalance, institutions, instruments, power.

Introduction

From the rst use of the term “femicide” in 1801 by John Corry, to the reappearance

of the term in 1976 by the famous feminist Diana Russell, a year that coincided with

the signing of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

against Women (CEDAW ), the term, despite being a steaming phenomenon, is still

not distinguished and dierentiated among the forms of violence, such as gender-

based violence (GBV), violence against women (VAW) or domestic violence (DV), the

recognition of which was sealed with the Istanbul Convention. Albania is a country

which has suered the consequences of violence and crime against women even

when these were not articulated institutionally in the society. Yet today, despite social

progress and the recognition of violence, the phenomenon nds a path to strike.

This paper is an aempt to contribute to raising awareness and knowledge on the

phenomenon of femicide in Albania. The research is based on the hypothesis that

every individual, institution and instrument on the basis of which society operates,

possesses a power that is disbalanced when the right to life is violated. This

disbalance escalates when the crime has gender causes and takes the life of a woman,

the foundation of life. To limit the eects up to the elimination of this crime, the

answer to the following questions is needed: where does the power of the femicide

lie and what is its eld of action? How can this phenomenon be curbed? Does gender

inequality stand in the imbalanced distribution of power in the Albanian society?

The methodology followed for the development of the research was rst to dene

the term and the framing of the femicide, then present the international and national

instruments and institutions, and after, take a look at the current situation on violence.

This was done in order to identify the base where power potentially intersects and

moves. As a secondary research, materials in support of the idea and purpose of this