Albania, the forgotten crisis

Everyday life for women in Albania - for the last forty years that meant hate, violence and torture for most Albanian women. Many women spent much of their lives in punishment camps. The rule of terror of the dictator, Enver Hoxha, lasted for 4 decades and under his regime Albania's Communist elite conducted a war against their own people.

Albania now has a democratic constitution. However, the country is still de facto ruled by a number of clans at loggerheads with each other, which maintain extremely patriarchal traditions. It is not unusual for women to be married off against their will to much older and often violent men. Or young women are sold to Italy and coerced into working in brothels there.

The women have to make an enormous effort to break the silence and talk about their experiences of violence in the punishment camps and within their own families. They have also grown up within this patriarchal tradition and can hardly imagine acting differently. The material conditions of daily life in Albania are also harsh: frequent food shortages, repeated power cuts and no water.

In 2000 medica mondiale set up a women's therapy centre in Tirana with a gynaecological practice. The women are offered psychosocial support and medical care, as well as receiving food supplies when there are shortages. Eight female doctors, nurses and social workers, specially trained to counsel and treat traumatized women, are currently working in the therapy centre and running health education campaigns in the slums on the outskirts of the city.

The suffering does not come to an end after war; women continue to suffer from the sexualised violence and torture they have experienced for a very long time. That is why they also need our help in the long term.

Albania is a forgotten crisis zone, but medica mondiale Tirana offers a sign of hope to the women there.