Albania’s Legal Aid Directorate Pushes to Close Gaps in Access to Justice for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Partnership with the European Union and UNHCR

TIRANA — When Albania established its Free Legal Aid Directorate in 2020, it marked a major shift toward guaranteeing state-funded legal assistance for those unable to afford it. Five years later, the institution has expanded from two to 20 legal aid centres across the country, providing thousands of people in Albania with essential legal support every year. Yet as Director General Patricia Pogaçe explains, one group remains almost entirely unable to benefit: refugees and asylum-seekers.

During an interview in Tirana, Pogaçe reflected on how the 2020 legal aid reform “reformed the whole scheme of free legal aid guaranteed by the state,” introducing a clear system of primary and secondary legal aid while expanding eligibility to 12 special categories of vulnerable groups, including survivors of domestic violence, trafficking victims, minors in conflict with the law, and persons with disabilities. These groups are exempt from many documentation and procedural requirements, a provision that recognizes both the challenges they face in obtaining documentation and the need for timely access to legal aid.

But despite legal provisions affirming the right of refugees and asylum-seekers to free legal assistance, they are not included in these special categories. This omission forces them to pass through eligibility filters that they are structurally unable to meet. They must present documentation proving they have no income or that they fall under a special category—documents they often lack due to displacement, the urgency of flight, and, in some cases, the requirement to produce records issued by their country of origin.

“The law states that refugees and asylum-seekers can benefit from primary legal services, but not automatically,” Pogaçe said. “De facto, it is impossible for them to get secondary legal aid nowadays.” Courts, which must approve secondary legal aid, routinely reject applications that lack full documentation. As a result, not a single refugee or asylum-seeker has received state-funded secondary legal representation. Their only access to counsel has been through specialised NGOs operating outside the state scheme.

It is precisely this structural exclusion that the consultancy led by UNHCR, with support from the European Union, aims to address. The collaboration is designed to help the Directorate identify legal gaps, map practical obstacles, and prepare concrete proposals for amending the legal framework so that refugees and asylum-seekers can receive legal aid automatically, just like other vulnerable groups. Pogaçe described the initiative as “very helpful for us to have simplified, clarifying procedures on how to give primary and secondary legal aid for these categories based on different examples of EU member states.”

The consultancy has been deeply consultative, involving legal aid providers across Albania who consistently reported similar challenges: the absence of translation services, limited technical knowledge of asylum procedures, difficulty detecting cases involving trauma or trafficking, and uncertainty around verifying refugee status. Pogaçe acknowledged that legal aid providers “haven’t learned this field in school,” underscoring the urgent need for sustained capacity-building. The EU-UNHCR-supported work is expected to outline a comprehensive training pathway for both primary and secondary legal aid providers.

Albania’s efforts to strengthen its legal aid system are closely monitored within the EU accession process, where access to justice and non-discrimination remain critical benchmarks. The European Commission has already highlighted the country’s expanding legal aid system as a reform success story, and this progress has become part of Albania’s broader integration priorities, reflected in the National Strategy for Integration under the access to justice component. But Pogaçe stressed that the next phase must focus on quality and inclusiveness: “Our main objective now is to ensure that every citizen and every category receive efficient and specialised legal aid.”

With the support of UNHCR and the European Union, the Directorate is preparing a package of legal amendments that will not only address the exclusion of refugees but also streamline procedures that have proved cumbersome over the past five years. Better institutional coordination, especially with bodies overseeing asylum and civil documentation, is also emerging as a priority.

Despite more than 500 outreach activities conducted by the Directorate this year, Pogaçe admits that public awareness of free legal aid remains low. Centres now work under monthly case-reach targets, prompting more proactive community engagement. In 2025, the Directorate assisted 5,673 people, and this number is expected to rise as reforms take hold.

For Pogaçe, who has been part of the institution since its creation, the work is not merely administrative. Having previously worked directly with survivors of domestic violence, she describes legal aid as both a professional and moral obligation. The anticipated legal reforms, driven in part by the UNHCR–EU consultancy, are, in her view, essential to ensuring that Albania’s justice system reflects its European aspirations and moral commitments.

As the country moves steadily along the path to EU integration, Pogaçe hopes the legal aid framework will evolve to guarantee equal access to justice for all, including the refugees and asylum-seekers who arrive at Albania’s borders seeking safety and a chance to rebuild their lives.