Children, the blossom of life, the base of society, the past us, and the future generation. It’s them who give this life a taste and it’s to them we owe our happiness. They are the most important as they are the ones to build on what we already built, add to what we’re adding, and maybe destroy what we’ve spent centuries building. Yes, the children absorb what we offer. If we offer them good treatment, care, love and stability, they’ll grow to be constructive, responsible and mature members of society. If we did them wrong and took away their rights from them, then we’ll end up having pathetic fearful persons, or violent criminals. Therefore and from this belief in the importance of children, her Majesty Queen Rania launched the Jordan River Children Program in 1997. A program that cares for the well being of children and supports families in their task of nurturing children.
And recently, in the end of February 2004, Jordan hosted the first Arab Conference of the International Society for Child Protection. As a result Jordan started out its Child Safety Program, in an attempt to preserve the rights of children and solve all their problems. The main concern of the program is to protect the children from physical and sexual abuse that might be practiced on them through their parents, or relatives or outsiders. It also reveals all ways, symptoms and reasons for the abuse, as well as offer help to the families, different levels of legal punishment to the parent and shelter to the child. Above all this the program covers the medical treatments of children who are subject to abuse and insures the psychological treatment for both the child and the parent.
The Child Safety Program works along with the ministries of Social Development, Health and Education, and the Family Protection Unit of the Public Security Directorate, providing all kinds of relevant and needed services.
The program operates through two existing centers that are maximizing their available resources and facilities to meet their goals and serve the community: The Dar Al-Aman (Child Safety Center), which is the first in Jordan and the Arab world. The duty of this center is to temporarily shelter and to offer psychological, medical, social and educational care for children victims of physical and sexual abuse and neglect. And the Jabal Al-Naser Prevention Center to increase awareness of healthy child-rearing practices that gradually decrease the incidence of child abuse and neglect.
The Child safety program discusses the reasons behind the passive role of other family members who find out about the child abuse but choose to remain silent, which are mostly: the fear of scandal, or the fear of losing the financial support of the parent or the fear of the power of the parent.
If you turn on the Jordan TV Channel you’ll notice the media campaign which aims at spreading awareness and providing instructions to children and parents, showing them the way to lead healthy life, and directing them to where they could find help and shelter. I find this really impressive and helpful. Parents or any other strangers will reconsider their behavior and children will be stronger and more aware of their rights and where to go and who to turn to in case of being a victim of abuse.

Way to go Jordan, keep up the good work 🙂
For more information about the Child Safety Program in Arabic you can check ZavenOnline
whose program (Sireh Wenfatahet) on Future TV talked about this issue yesterday.
And for more information about the Jordan River Foundation and its other programs ClickHere
Hoping that all other Arab countries will follow the steps of Jordan to make sure our precious children are in safe hands.