The Hotline

Introduction

The Hotline was established in 1996 in response to the growing number of families with difficulties and in order to meet these families’ needs. 

The project received thousands of calls from women whose problems had been covered up for a long time. The hotline provides these women with a chance to receive counselling and legal advice.

Background

The Committee for combating domestic violence against women was founded in the year 1994 with the aim of studying its phenomenon of violence, its nature, its size and factors contributing to its increase. The committee held an initial workshop with specialists in this field. The workshop revealed that the size of the problem is huge and that domestic violence against women and children is a common practice in Jordan. It also revealed that this issue is completely ignored due to legislative, cultural and economic reasons. In addition, the issue of domestic violence is being treated as an issue which no one outside the family has the right to interfere in it. Neither the women nor the children ever ask for help nor complain about the violence committed against them. This is mainly because of their low status in the family and in the society, their ignorance about legal provisions for their protection and their lack of social and psychological support.    The

Committee decided to implement a program to resist violence against women.

 In February 1995 it held a training course for specialists in the various relevant spheres such as law, health, psychology and sociology.

 Realising the great need among Jordanian women for legal consultation and psychological support, the ' initiated the Hot Line Project in 1996.

The Aims of the Hotline

·        Providing female victims of violence with access to legal, psychological and social advice

·        Organizing a mass media campaign to introduce the Hot line and to introduce means available to combat violence.

·        Following-up some cases and providing legal, health and psychological treatment.

·        Contributing in rehabilitation programs and setting up group support sessions

·        Forming pressure groups to amend laws that contribute to violent practices against women

·        Conduction researches on different aspects of domestic violence in general and violence against women in particular

·        Collection data and statistics and documenting violence against women and children

The Major Achievements

 The Hot Line Project gained a good reputation and confidence of many women around Jordan. It enabled the Union to enter many houses and to talk to victims of violence. The program has received a total of 5504 calls since 1996. Demand for the service has increased beyond the existing capacities of '.

The Major Problems 

•  Only telephone advice is not sufficient because some women have no access to telephone. Social and economic constrains prevent some women from contacting the '. Therefore, the ' is obliged to receive some cases in the union’s premises and to make visits to women in their houses. 

• The ' needs to expand the hotline service to the different branches of the Union in order to respond to the growing needs of women all over the Kingdom and in particular to reach out to rural areas where violence is a wide spread phenomenon due to the social and economic deterioration