Albanian LGBTI people contribute to society just like everybody else

Today, at the end of  Pride Month, we are delighted to launch  an unique animation video titled “Albanian LGBTI+ people contribute to society just like everybody else!”. The objective of this video is to raise awareness for the human rights of the Albanian LGBTI+ community.

After organizing the first Online Pride in Europe under the name of Tirana #PrideON, we are

happy to join the global activities organized for Pride Month under the motto “Exist, Persist,

Resist”. The Albanian LGBTI+ community has been and will continue to exist, persist and resist while contributing to the society on a daily basis. The LGBTI+ community is as diverse as human nature itself and so are their roles, functions and jobs. Therefore, the animation video is a message of respect and a loud call to keep combating all forms of discrimination and societal exclusion, hate crime, hate speech and hate propaganda towards these members of society.

In difficult times like these, thanks to the continuous support of our international project partners and donors, we have focused our efforts on showing the resilience and the contribution of the LGBTI+ community in our society. A society that is unfortunately and redundantly full of prejudice and fundamental misconceptions on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

This video marks the start of a larger campaign focused on raising awareness and encouraging action to continuously promote LGBTI+ equality, diversity, inclusion and human-rights. Because LGBTI+ rights are simply human rights!

During this period of Covid-19 many of us have experienced a great deal of stress, insecurity, uncertainty, isolation and in some cases unacceptable violence. LGBTI+ people go through life experiencing this array of emotions for a huge part of their lives. Just because they are perceived to be negatively different to the dominant societal norm. Many of us will remove their masks after the pandemic is over. But sadly, this won’t be the case for hundreds of LGBTI+ people, who will still have to live a double life without the opportunity and luxury  to remove their ‘masks’. This situation must end today; here and now!

The awareness campaign is part of the MATRA project ‘Countering discrimination and protecting LGBTI rights in Albania’, which aims to assist Albanian law enforcement, criminal justice chain partners and municipalities in the promotion of human rights of particularly LGBTI and focuses on strengthening their collaboration on increased reporting, investigation, registration and prosecution (or other types of follow-up) of incidents of hate crime, hate speech, hate propaganda and discrimination against the LGBTI+ community in Albania.

The project is jointly implemented by the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, COC Netherlands and the Dutch National Police, with the Albanian Police as project partner at which capacity building is oriented, and a number of other bodies that interact with the police in the fight against discrimination also involved, including civil society. It is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

We are launching our campaign with this video, with more to come on the following months. Stay tuned and have a Happy Pride!