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.

Last week, the Stockholm-based international human rights organization Civil Rights Defenders awarded her the prestigious prize of civil rights defender for her work to bring change to the community in her country, alongside Uganda's Frank Mugisha.

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.