NGOs, public sector merge on VAC.

By Muna Awwad Star staff writer According to figures announced by the Public Security Directorate (PSD), approximately 2,808 cases of violence against children (VAC) in Jordan were documented within one year including violence at home, neighborhood, and school--whether this violence was physical, verbal, sexual or child neglect.Leading to real health and psychological life-time problems, it was indicated by findings of many studies that the children who have been abused or subjected to violence suffer in periods of their lives from low-self esteem and other similar problems. According to these studies, the situation will not only affect the children who are victims of VAC, but also those who have observed such violence within their families.In Jordan, with more than one concerned board to receive cases of VAC, depending on the nature of the case or the propensity of the victim to complain, number of statistics and methods of reaction regarding VAC vary from one board to another.Muhammad Shabana, head of the Family Unit at the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD), said, "Our offices implement many ways within the programs we organize aiming to make a change to any negative phenomenon related to family matters specially of what is abusive to the children's rights. We cooperate with media, give courses about managing a family for beginner families, and offer special care, for those families of which children have already been victims of violence, through psychological and social rehabilitation."Muhammad Sadeq, of the MoSD's community development department (CDD), explained, "CDD is mainly concerned with prior awareness and preventive projects; working within many different social fields, offering awareness with regard to parent-children relations is considered one of our concentration issues."For its part, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Jordan is also seeking to participate in the local safety programs targeting children. Maha Hemsy, coordinator at the Jordan UNICEF offices, stated, "Our method of work is organized through a 5-year agreement between us and the government of Jordan which is appended by yearly agreements with governmental concerned sectors within the Kingdom such as the MoSD." She added that "the services we concentrate on depends on each program by itself. We offer awareness and social services through and with the cooperation of those concerned sectors".Due to social sensitivity, many cases of VAC are discovered by coincidence in health clinics where beaten children go to get treatment, not wanting to carry out their case to any public concerned party. "That's where the importance of the health sector comes with regard to its role in reducing VAC," said Maha Saheb, counselor at the Family Violence Department of the Ministry of Health (MoH). "Many abused women and children who come for treatment at medical clinics and have suffered or still suffer violence intend not to talk about their problems to any public sector or counseling department; this can be due to fear of scandal in a socially-sensitive society like ours. Most of the time, if the injury caused by violence was simple, the nurses would give personal help or advice regarding rights; in case of dangerous injury however, the health sector is keen on taking its role by reporting the case immediately to the emergency department which has each case under investigation and therefore would offer the protection for children who need it and who are afraid to report violence because they fear to talk their problems out loud."In spite of those previously mentioned cases, Luma Abu Judeh, secretary general of the Family Protection Administration (FPA) of PSD, assured that while the sensitivity of family violence has prevented the reduction of VAC for many years, the fact of having special departments within the police institutions only dealing with personal situations far away from public has greatly instilled courage in children to contact the police when exposed to violence. She said, "Socially-related police officers working in departments such as FPA do not act with people as police. The department is sure that personal life is really personal. While FPA itself is concerned with crimes and investigations of family cases reported to the police, different specialized centers work as part of FPA to serve only in social services; such as FPA's social service office (SSO) which helps easing violence issues or any other family problems through hiring staff from MoSD and training them, as well as hiring doctors and specialized counselors. SSO is also known for following-up on cases with which it has dealt."Abu Judeh also mentioned the difficulty most social institutions face when trying to scan the society for detailed studies or precise statistics. "When dealing with statistics, we always seem to contradict with other concerned parties such as the human rights organizations and even the MoSD in accordance with social development issues, and that's due to the different cases we receive to the ones they do, which makes it harder to indicate the targeted area that the study is covering. We therefore tend to keep contact and real cooperation with NGOs working in the same field," she stated.In this context, PR at UNICEF/Jordan, Ruba Hikmat, explained that social services fieldwork can't be undertaken without cooperation. "UNICEF deals mainly with managerial work, organizing plans and programs, preparing indications of serious social problems affecting Jordanian children, but then implements the programs by cooperating with children-related organizations and institutions in order to go onto fieldwork."As one of the joint efforts made to reach a turning point in the phenomenon of VAC in Jordan, UNICEF, in cooperation with MoSD, offered a training course to apply strategic planning for confronting social phenomena and has concentrated the current of the course towards VAC. "This kind of strategic planning is essential in order to achieve the required impact on a social phenomenon. We usually prepare such plans for health purposes having the people to act differently towards aspects of cause which lead to that social problem. For VAC in Jordan, thinking accordingly by most sectors that have the chance of real influence on social development will surely make a difference with regard to the methods and criteria used by social working citizens," said Dr Everold Hosein, senior communication advisor-consultant for both World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, adding, "before Jordan, a similar try was experienced in Albania on the same subject, VAC, targeting teacher violence against students at school; it is being implemented with great results." The course combined different sectors relating in one way or another to social development as a step to getting local institutions, governmental and non-governmental, involved as much as possible with social development plans in a more cooperational form. A*NGOs, public sector merge on VAC

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