Albania: Young people leaving social care need dignity and housing – an appeal on National Orphans Day

Social housing in Albania is scarce and generally inaccessible to the poorest and most vulnerable, including orphans. Equally, most of these young people cannot afford private accommodation without financial support. Amnesty International calls on the authorities to secure their access to adequate housing without further delay, whether by providing such support in the form of rent subsidies, or by other means.

In its report released today, In Search of Shelter – Leaving Social Care in Albania (Index: EUR 11/004/2010, Amnesty International writes: “Poverty is one of the main reasons for the placement of children in institutional care in Albania, and the state does little to help them escape poverty”. As a result of the state’s failure to adequately protect their rights, when they become adults they are likely to be homeless and to be at risk of extreme poverty and social exclusion.

The right to adequate housing is a right guaranteed in international law, which requires states to give priority to disadvantaged groups. Albanian law guarantees orphans the right to priority with housing. Yet according to official statistics, between 1996 and 2008 only 29 out of 845 registered orphans obtained housing under the law’s provisions (none of them after 2005). Government housing policy to date has not prioritized housing for the most needy and current social housing programmes will benefit only a small minority of Albania’s homeless, said to number over 40,000 families.

Amnesty International considers that young people leaving state social care do not receive the support they need to make the transition to independent life. Many leave school without acquiring the skills and qualifications that would enable them to find secure employment and an income enabling them to live independently.

With no family to turn to, and often only insecure and ill-paid employment, they may have little choice but to live in the grim conditions of semi-abandoned school buildings – the state’s only “solution” to their housing needs. Some have shared rooms in such buildings for nearly 20 years, and are now bringing up children of their own in these squalid conditions. Each year they are joined by other young people who on leaving school have found themselves similarly homeless.

As one young woman raised in social care told Amnesty International: “People need more than a crust of bread, they need to live in dignity … An orphan can find dignity only if he or she has housing.”

In its report and also in a Memorandum sent to the Albanian government in November 2009 and made public today, Orphans and other children deprived of parental care – Amnesty International’s concerns (Index: EUR 11/002/2010), the organization calls for all young people deprived of parental care to be given adequate individual support and supervision up to the age of 18 years and as they make the transition to adulthood and independence. It further urges the Albanian government to adopt comprehensive legislation dealing with leaving social care and aftercare, in accordance with international standards. This should apply also to young people raised in social care who do not meet the criteria for orphan status, but whose families are unable or unwilling to provide them with shelter and support.

Additional information
This work is part of Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity campaign which aims to end the human rights violations that drive and deepen global poverty. The campaign will mobilise people all over the world to demand that governments, corporations and others who have power listen to the voices of those living in poverty and recognise and protect their rights. For more information visit http://www.amnesty.org/en/demand-dignity