The Head of the Delegation of the European Union in Albania, Ambassador Christiane Hohmann, made her first visit this year to the Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents. The visit comes a few days after the appointment of Mrs. Gentiana Sula, as head of the Authority. In this visit, Ambassador Hohmann was also accompanied by Mrs. Frederique Hanotier, official responsible for Human Rights and Democracy, in the EU delegation in Tirana. 

The delegation and its head were received by the chairman and members of the Authority, where they got to know closely the work of the institution, the current and future challenges, and the new spaces where the Authority conducts its activities. 

Cooperation between AIDSSH and the EU in the project "Increasing public awareness of transitional and reconciliation justice; the disappeared in communism", implemented with ICMP, as well as the finalization of products as a guide for the right of family members in initiating practices for clarifying the fate of the family of the missing person, reporting the location, etc. were at the center of the talks. 

In the framework of this visit, it was also discussed about the conclusions of the EU Progress Report for 2021, for the implementation of fundamental rights in dealing with the issue of missing persons in communism, in which it is emphasized that "the solution of the cases has remained low partly due to the lack of capacities and resources and the political will to create an efficient cooperation mechanism between the relevant institutions and to increase public awareness of this issue". 

The Chairperson informed that the Authority has been working on this issue and is awaiting the approval of a VKM which regulates the procedures for the identification and recovery of missing persons. This normative act is decisive and defines the role of each party in this process, in relation to the exhumation order for suspected areas where the remains of missing or found persons can be found. In this framework, the Authority is cooperating with the OSCE office, the EU and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) to push the process forward. 

Mr. Gjergj Marku, representative of the associations of the politically persecuted in the Authority, introduced the ambassador to the map of the places of execution, as well as the requests of hundreds of family members who are looking for their missing relatives. 

In total, there are 203 requests registered with the Authority from 2017-2022, to clarify the fate of those who disappeared during the communist regime. Meanwhile, the Shkodër Archdiocese of the Catholic Church has requested cooperation in finding 38 Catholics convicted and shot during the communist regime. The Association of Former Political Persecuted in Shkodra has made available to us a list of 353 convicted or shot in the city of Shkodra, as well as the places of execution and which are suspected of being burial grounds for those often convicted without trial, in the Highlands of Madhe, in Pukë, in Fushë Arrëz and Vau i Deja. 

The visit continued to the archive of documents of the former State Security, where the delegation got to know the work processes, the way of storage, the typology of files, as well as concrete documents. 

Discussions on the Authority's goals and future continued in the meeting room, where a presentation of the institution's work during the first term was made, as far as informing citizens, researchers and the media about the documents of the former State Security, as and the creation of a special structure for the disappeared in communism.