Child maltreatment comes out of the shadows.

Sabah and Nidal (names changed) were abandoned by their mother as toddlers and left with their father, who had no idea how to look after them. After feeding them and changing their diapers in the morning, he would leave them alone for 10 hours while he went to work. The children are now in the care of the Dar Al Aman child protection centre in Amman, Jordan. Dar Al Aman – which means “house of security” in Arabic – is the only therapeutic centre in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region that offers psychological, medical, social and educational services to maltreated children. It also counsels families and teaches them the principles of good parenting. “We aim to unify the family by using therapy to help the child overcome the problems they’ve faced and empower the family, so that the child can return home,” said Dar Al Aman’s child safety manager Nancy Naghour. Sometimes children who have suffered extreme physical, sexual and psychological abuse are sent to the centre by court order. Dar Al Aman accommodates 32 children at a time and is privately funded. Established in 2000 by the Jordan River Foundation, a charity chaired by Queen Rania of Jordan, Dar al Aman has helped more than 280 children and their families. Queen Rania has spearheaded child protection efforts in her country over the past decade by raising public awareness of abuse and the need to promote the well-being of children. “Her Majesty Queen Rania was very courageous. She said we have to face this abuse, even if it’s a taboo subject,” Naghour said. “She said we have to open a safe place to help these children and their families. Without her, it wouldn’t have been easy to start dealing with such a very sensitive and complicated issue in our culture and society,” she added. Other institutions in Jordan are also working to prevent child maltreatment and create greater public awareness of the problem, such as the Queen Rania Center for Child and Family, established in 2005, the Family Protection Department, the National Council for Family Affairs, Questscope’s mentoring programme and the Jordan Society for Protecting Victims of Family Violence. But Dar Al Aman has served as a model for other child welfare and safety programmes in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region, which spans 22 countries and includes the Palestinian territories. Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen also host care centres, according to Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain, a child safety expert from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. “These centres also have free helplines, which anyone can call, including the child, to report abuse. The centres make sure they follow up those cases,” he said.