The story relevant to Yazidi girl ''Jinan Adel'' has overshadowed international media outlets' coverage of the one-day conference organized by the foreign ministries of France and Jordan in Paris. This girl had been kidnapped by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants for three months. She fled to France to document her suffering in a book titled, "Jinan, Daesh's Slave" (Jinan, ISIS' Slave). In her book, she describes the suffering she had been exposed to. This made French President François Hollande refer to her in his opening speech and meet with her at length while being covered by media outlets. The writer of this article was present at this meeting, in his capacity as member of the Jordanian delegation, during which Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh stated that Jordan serves as a model for sublime plurality.
Throughout the speeches delivered by more than 20 foreign ministers as well as representatives of regional and international organizations, the Jordanian presence was the most prominent. Jordan's King, government and people received gratitude and appreciation for organizing this conference as well as for drawing the general public's attention to the need to care for those oppressed and suffering in the Middle East due to ethnical and religious reasons.
During the dinner banquet held at the house of Jordan's Ambassador to France Makram Al Qaisi, Foreign Minister Judeh said that the conference title is about protecting religious and ethnical "minorities'', yet he insisted that the title would change to become ''protection of the victims of the ethnic and religious violence". During the opening ceremony, the foreign minister said, among other things, that we in Jordan do not use this term and that, as a state organizing the conference, we neither have "coexistence'' nor "minorities''. We have components and civilized contributions within the framework of law, the spirit of citizenship and equality.
The conference was not only designed to protect any group subjected to violence or persecution—as was the case with the Christians and Yazidiz in Iraq last year, as well as with the photo of the child who drowned on the shores of Turkey which shook the world and made Europe welcome the fleeing, the displaced and the oppressed—but rather to reveal an Arab Middle Eastern country which managed to fulfill a duty a superpower could not attain. This country is Jordan. It has managed to receive over a million displaced persons at a time when a great country like Germany tries to accommodate more than a million refugees in a period of two years.
The Jordanian image was vivid and clear in the various interlocutions which lauded the prevailing atmospheres of national unity among the various components of the Jordanian society. Thus Jordan, due to its wise leadership and the awareness of its people, remained a safe bastion amidst conflagrated environs.
The "Paris working plan''--which was issued by the conference organized by the foreign ministries of both France and Jordan--called for giving due attention to the societal components based on providing humanitarian, political and legal assistance. The plan does represent a new achievement for a Middle Eastern country that does not consider its citizens on the bases of "minority and majority'', rather on the extent of coherence in ties and contribution to a future that is safer for the new generations.
