Legalising euthanasia in Albania? To Act or Not To Act: That Is the Question

by, Erjona Bana, Aferdita Tepshi, Sofjana Veliu

Abstract

Legalising euthanasia and helping others who are suffering to die is debated throughout the world. Whether to permit assisted suicide and euthanasia today is among the most contentious legal and public policy questions. The right to life is a non -derogable right, Indivisible and inalienable. It is difficult to imagine a more fundamental human right than the Right to Life. But we have to recognize that life and death are two sides of the same coin. There can be no life without death and no death without life. The two are absolutely inseparable. If life is a fundamental human right then death is too? This article presents a comparative analysis of euthanasia in several states. Few countries have changed their law’s traditional prohibition on euthanasia. The best known public policy shift occurred, of course, in the Netherlands with the acceptance of the practice of euthanasia and this has led, most recently, to its formal decriminalisation by the Dutch Parliament. The only other changes have been the short-lived legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Northen Territory of Australia and of the latter practice in the State of Oregon in America. Elsewhere in the world, the arguments in favor of, and pleas for,