Speech of the People’s Advocate of the Republic of Albania,

Proff.  Ermir Dobjani  in the Conference of the PABSEC Ombudsman

Istanbul, 26 April 2006

The Role of the Ombudsman Institution in consolidating democracy

Dear Mr./Ms. Chair

Dear Colleagues

I would like to take this advantage  and express my thanks to the organizers of this Conference for the invitation and the opportunity they have given me  to make a brief presentation of the Albanian People`s Advocate  Institution,   which I have been leading  for 6 years.

The Constitution of the Republic of Albania, adopted on November 28, 1998, following eight years of democratic changes, envisaged for the first time the Institution of the People’s Advocate (Ombudsman), as a national instance, guarantee of democracy through the genuine protection granted to the fundamental human rights and freedoms in Albania.  Based on the Constitution of the Republic of Albania, wherein the duties, status and powers of the Ombudsman are determined in five articles therein, in February 1999, the Albanian Parliament adopted the Law No. 8454, dated 04 February 1999 “On People's Advocate (Ombudsman)”.

In the Law No. 8600, dated 10 April 2000,  a supplement was made  in the article 35 with the view to strengthening the independence of the People`s Advocate  towards Government by entitling the People’s Advocate to determine the structure, staff number, the specific qualities and qualifications, while the remuneration is regulated with a governmental decision.

The People's Advocate office consists of three specialized sections. responsible for the respective complaints and requests.

First Section, responsible for complaints against the central governmental bodies, local governmental bodies, and third parties working on their behalf.

Second Section, responsible for complaints against police, secret intelligence service, prisons, armed forces, and judiciary.

Third Section  handles  cases, which are not included in the first two sections, likewise collaborating with the NGOs, and carries out researches relevant to the area of human rights and freedoms

Since 2005 it has been set up the Subsection for Children’s Rights within our Institution. In May 2005 some other supplements were made to the law “On the People’s Advocate”, further strengthening the position of the People`s Advocate by entitling him to suspend the administrative acts till his recommendation is scrutinized.

The Albanian law  for the People’s Advocate  is a combination of the Danish, Swedish and Polish law.

By the end of 90-ies, when the establishment of the People`s Advocate Institution was still under discussion, before the approval of the constitution took place, some surveys conducted by some NGO-s had concluded that the Ombudsman was unknown to the major part of the people interviewed including here Albanian lawyers and sociologists.

For the establishment of the Institution of the Albanian People`s Advocate were engaged some of the international bodies, especially the Council of Europe and OSCE. The international pressure helpful for the establishment of the democratic institutions, following the financial support to Albania, was associated positively with a coordinated support through consultancy, thrashing out ideas, supporting initiatives and moreover through financial guarantees for this new institution. The establishment of the Institution of the People`s Advocate in Albania  is absolutely the product of the democratic discretion of the Albanian political forces to be open minded at the increasing requirements of the International Community and get involved in the European integration  process.

It is certain that, the keystone contribution to defining a clear vision of the People’s Advocate Institution activity was provided  by DANIDA project of the Danish Government for Albania, aiming at establishing, strengthening and consolidating our Office.

Since the very beginning, the People’s Advocate was concentrated on the solution of some complaints regarding issues affecting a big number of citizens in Albania. To give a solution to these complaints meant that the People`s Advocate should intervene to the main state institutions or provide recommendations on the improvement of legislation for positive results. An example is the complaint of an ex-landowner, expropriated by the communist regime, whose land property was used by the communist state to build a factory, which at present was under the process of privatization. The landowner was invited to become a shareholder but the value of his land property and consequently the value of his share was very low decided by a decision taken by the Government. This was an open violation of the right to property, therefore the People’s Advocate recommended to the Government to change its decision on the question. The government refused to consider our Recommendation, so the People’s Advocate had to refer the case to the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court considered the case as a flagrant violation of human rights and invalidated the decision of the Government as it was recommended by the People`s Advocate. The solution given to a complaint in favour of the complainant was an advantage to hundreds of ex-landowners in Albania. This had its reflection  in the law of the year 2004 on the restitution and compensation  of properties to ex- landowners.

You can understand the positive impact of this case to the Albanian public opinion thinking that a very new institution like the People`s Advocate “taught a good lesson to the Government”. All this had an effect upon all other institutions of the Albanian public administration which learned that the recommendations of the People’s Advocate must be considered, respected and implemented. There have been other similar cases encountered and resolved.

In six year activity the People’s Advocate staff has faced an increasing workload, amounting to approximately 19 200 complaints, with an average of 23 per cent being solved positively, i.e in  favour of the citizens.

The main challenge of the Institution of the  People’s Advocate, since the year 2000, has been the establishment of an independent service  system for the citizens whose rights were eventually violated by the public administration.

Therefore, we had to set up within the Institution such a system which would be ready and willing to assist at any time the citizens submitting complaints, or making any request, without hindering them, thereby making them feel comfortable and welcome, and immediately benefit from the Institution's services, the way they deserve and expect from our administration. To meet the target of enhancing the quality level of services provided to citizens by our Office, we have adapted patterns of other counterpart offices in Europe. In June 2001, the Complaints and Public Relations Office has commenced functioning. It is in this Office that the citizens, at any time during the visiting hours, can submit their complaints, or requests, likewise be given the appropriate explanations by one of the office experts. This system has been adopted according to the model followed by the Ombudsman's Office of Catalonia Province in Spain. Consequently, the number of complaints beyond the jurisdiction and competency of the People's Advocate has been reduced.

As a way to a direct communication with the public, during the year 2002, we started to implement a new experience, so called “Open Days”.

Under the circumstances of an ever increasing decentralization in favour of the local Government competency, People’s Advocate thinks that the problems should be given a solution at the place where they appear and with the  people who purposely  or due to their lack of knowledge  bring them about.

We have considered the practice of “Open Days” as very efficient that  reduces considerably the bureaucratic procedures, the long routs to Tirana,  the financial costs  and why not  the abuses with the citizens rights, by resulting in the citizens becoming more trustful of the state, institutions and the legislation.

Jurisdiction of this new National Human Right Institution of Albania covers a wide range of issues, affecting the human right dimension in our country. Ombudsman intervention for improving the voters list and clearing it from the passed away people, Ombudsman intervention for preventing the law violators from being repeatedly part of election commissions, and still, appointment of the Ombudsman representative to the top of media monitoring board during the election process, are contribution of the Ombudsman for the current election situation in Albania.

Human rights abuses by the police have always been  a priority to this office. During six years of activity, as many as 100 police officers have been punished upon Ombudsman`s recommendation, for violating and abusing human rights.

I wish to bring to the attention of this audience, just an example, which accounts for the  intervention of the Albanian Ombudsman  making possible to exhume someone corpse to reach  the conclusion that his death was caused by the police ill-treatment and not from alcohol overdose, as it was claimed initially by the  police themselves and the prosecutor’s office. Consequently, five police officers were put behind bars, avoiding as such an example of impunity, and simultaneously preventing a conflict between the police and the people.    

The People’s Advocate has recently given a very good contribution in dealing with cases on the trafficked children and has cooperated with the Greek Ombudsman on this question.

The Institution of the People’ s Advocate has been operating for 6 years in Albania by giving its contribution to enhance the good governance practices. It ensures an observation over the administrative  performance of the governing bodies and  public authorities, of haw   they are at the service of their taxpayers. The People’s Advocate goal, in all this daily interaction, is the respecting of  fundamental human rights and freedoms of the individuals, and eventually the redressing of  the individual’ s   right violated by the public administration employee.

In this sense, in addition to protecting human rights, one of its principal targets is the development of what is labelled  as the culture of good governance. It implies good administration, openness, transparency, and accountability on the part of the public administration to the taxpayers paying taxes to support it. The People's Advocate, through his recommendations, tries to educate the public administration, hence making it aware of the real role it has to play in relation to citizens, that is focus on the factual reason of its existence, respectively the status of civil servants paid by the citizens, rather than that of stingy ownership of the citizens' rights.

In a state anticipated to function under the principles of the limited powers, as the democratic model requires, the handling of cases is just a challenge to face, and this is what we are trying to do as best, by interacting with the civil society, media, human rights institutions and government institutions.

In conclusion out of this brief presentation, we can say that in case the transition democracies are required to consolidate the democratic process, as well as to accomplish good governance and respect for human rights, consequently it implies that the role of the People's Advocate (Ombudsman) will become increasingly significant. The skilfulness and capacity of the Albanian State towards efficiently exercising its responsibilities in protecting the citizen's rights primarily shall depend on the authority and powerfulness of the institutions in the country.

Experience has shown that in the countries of fragile democracy like ours,  the democratic institutions can be set up from the foundation.

Thank you for your attention.