How a women’s rights organization and the National Employment and Skills Agency in Albania are joining forces to support women survivors of violence integrate in the job market.

The UN Resident Coordinator’s Office and UN Women Albania co-organized an online training on the Gender Equality Marker (GEM) and the Human Rights Marker (HRM). The overall aim of the training was to ensure that the GEM and HR Marker scoring will be accurate for the upcoming Joint Work Planning cycle, which will cover the 2024-2025 period. The training was also an important step for ensuring the accuracy of markers is instrumental for adequately score UNCT SWAP Indicator 6.1, which verifies whether adequate resources for gender mainstreaming are allocated and tracked.

A two-day workshop on gender participatory budgeting and community outreach practices brought together civil society organizations, local government representatives, activists, and gender-responsive budgeting experts from Albania and North Macedonia.

Thirty experts including government officials from ministries of finances, national gender mechanisms, local government representatives and supreme audit institutions, together with UN Women officials from across the Western Balkans met in Tirana, Albania on 3-4 May to monitor the progress in the implementation of the project “Transformative Financing for Gender Equality towards more Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable Governance in the Western Balkans” In 2022.

UN Women in Albania, the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator (RCO), and the UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia organized a training on Monitoring & Evaluation and Gender Data dedicated to UN staff involved in programme management.

The UN Women office in Albania teamed up with the government, civil society organizations, international partners, and other UN agencies operating in the country to mark this year's 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence with a variety of public events, university lectures, trainings, social media campaigns and much more.

The Ministry of Health and Social Protection and UN Agencies in Albania launched the “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” campaign supported by UN Women. The event brought together government and international partners, feminists, women’s rights activists, as well as many others who work every day to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls.

Since September 2021, UN Women has been working closely with UNHCR and CARITAS in Albania to ensure that migrant and asylum-seeking women and girls, in particular those at high risk of being subjected to violence, are properly identified and welcomed in the country.

Stela Tanellari is the Deputy Director and Reintegration Programme Manager of Different and Equal, an organisation in Albania that provides services for women survivors of violence. It has developed a complex approach for women’s economic reintegration under UN Women’s regional programme on ending violence against women “Implementing Norms, Changing Minds,” funded by the European Union.

Spartak Kosta is a third-year journalism student at the University of History and Philology in Tirana, Albania. He was among the first group of students to take a new university course on the reporting of trafficking of women and girls. The educational course was developed at the recommendation of a UN Women monitoring report. The study finds that journalists often write shallow trafficking stories that lack deep analysis and use unethical language with regards to victims.

One year after seven municipalities in Albania formally confirmed their commitment to gender equality by signing the European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life, five of them, supported by UN Women, have prepared Gender Equality Action Plans. The municipal councils of Tirana, Elbasan and Durres have already approved their Action Plans.

A UN Women-led campaign results in Albania’s first-ever community budget consultations and brings immediate benefits to those in need.

To support women and girl survivors of trafficking, UN Women in Albania has been supporting service-providers in shelters with capacity-building and salary subsidies under the project “Preventing and addressing violence against women and girls in Albania”, implemented by UN Women with funding from the European Union.