This paper addresses the transformation of the human rights discourse in post-communist Albania from the early 1990s, during the transition period, to the recent years, which reflect a professionalization of the civil society organizations and a different set of human rights issues. In order do understand the changes in the human rights discourse in Albania, it is useful to scrutinize the late socialist period of the dictatorship and contrast this peculiar Stalinist regime with other countries in the Eastern Europe, which were more innovative in terms of socialist legality, conceptualizations of socialist human rights as well as challenged the assumed socialist framework of human rights through public dissent. This paper uses a qualitative methodology and relies on the analysis of textual evidence to underline the differences and similarities across time regarding the human rights discourse in post-communist Albania. On the other hand, the paper highlights the role of political parties, their programmatic ideas on human rights, and the role of civil society organizations and associations that address and defend human rights in the Albanian society. One of the key findings of the research is that the basis of the human rights discourse in post-communist Albania, particularly after regime change, was created by political parties and not so much by civil society organizations. The second key finding of the paper is that the shift in human rights discourse and its set of issues happens as a consequence of external institutions influence and the so-called professionalization of civil society, which is not simply focusing on the advocacy of human rights.