Xheni Karaj

Neither gender-affirming hormone therapy nor sex reassignment surgery is available in Albania, meaning transgender Albanians like Fiona face having to self-medicate or travel to North Macedonia, Serbia or Turkey. The costs, financial and psychological, can be huge.

A lesbian couple who in January became mothers of a twin baby girls after ten years of co-habitation, the first known such case in Albania, face a quandary and a possible legal battle after the Civil Registry told them they could register the babies as born from a single mother but cannot both be registered as parents.