Children were the focus of two new initiatives to which Mrs Suzanne Mubarak devoted her attention this week... At the end of a three-day Middle East and North Africa conference on violence against children, Mrs Mubarak launched a hotline for children to report cases of violence and abuse to the authorities. The new 16000 number also provides guidance and advice for Egyptian children living in fear of violence and abuse. Acknowledging the cultural sensitivities involved in operating this service, Mrs Mubarak said that the hotline aimed to prevent children living in adverse conditions from physical or moral abuse. She said it might induce Egyptian society to publicly admit its often-overlooked cases of child abuse. On Tuesday Mrs Mubarak met with a group of Egyptian and Indonesian children at the Heliopolis Library to launch the "Children Celebrate Diversity Initiative". Proposed by the Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement (SMWIPM), the project aims to promote cross-cultural tolerance among children aged five to 18. In the first of a series of events scheduled to unfold throughout July and August, SMWIPM and the Indonesian Embassy in Cairo co-sponsored a two-day workshop involving Egyptian children and Indonesian children living in Egypt meeting, playing, singing and exchanging stories. The objective, said one of the event's coordinators, Nihad Abdel-Gawwad, was getting both Egyptian and Indonesian children to recognise that, despite their differences, they are perfectly capable of "being together". At the inauguration, Mrs Mubarak joined Egyptian and Indonesian children in singing songs of peace in Arabic and English, including Umm Kulthoum's We Called for Peace, and the global medley, We Are the World, We are the Children. Eleven other embassies in Egypt have agreed to co-sponsor similar peace workshops with SMWIPM. They include Pakistan, Brunei, Malaysia, Russia, Canada, Armenia, China, the Philippines, India, and Peru.
