Securing its territorial borders and maritime interests has been a daunting task for the Maldives because of the geographic spread of the 1,190 islands over a vast expanse of the India Ocean. The majority of these islands are very small and uninhabited and even most of the inhabited islands are sparsely
49 populated. The growing problem of Somali pirates operating in the Indian Ocean and sometimes intruding into the national waters of the Maldives has become a significant concern for the country in the last few years. Prior to this there have been few outside threats to the territorial integrity of the country since its independence in 1965.
During Gayoom’s presidency, two coup d'état attempts were made in 1980 and 1983 to bring down his Government. A third attempt on 3 November 1988 was a more serious threat, which involved the Sri Lankan militant group, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), an offshoot of the Sri Lankan terrorist organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Instigated by a local businessman, about 80 armed mercenaries landed in Malé and attempted to take over the Government. They were successful in taking over a number of government buildings, but were not able to capture President Gayoom. At Gayoom’s request, a speedy military intervention by the Indian Government helped to overcome the crisis. Indian troops brought the situation under control, and with Indian Navy assistance helped capture the mercenaries as they were fleeing aboard a hijacked freighter.
The other more significant threat to the peace and security of the Maldives comes from religious extremism. Being a 100 per cent Muslim country, the events and developments in the immediate vicinity of the country particularly among its South Asian neighbours has a profound impact on certain segments of the Maldivian population. Although religious radicalism is not new to the Maldives with one or two people subscribing to extremist ideology being detained during the 1970s, Gayoom’s use of Islam as part of the Maldives’ national identity has enabled these pockets of extremist ideology to exist and flourish in the country (Waheed, 2009).
Although Gayoom recognised the need to address extremism, his push towards making Islam an integral part of Maldivian society led to the development of a neo-Salafi ideology in the early 1990s. This ideology rejects violence and is based on what Waheed (2009) identifies as a “Wahhabi Myth”
50 that promoted a Saudi-based Islam, which called for a return to the principles, practices and the way of life represented in the Arabian Gulf during the time of the Prophet. In the meantime, a number of violent terrorist organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba were preying on Maldivian students in various institutions and
madhrasas in Pakistan through offers of free religious education. These groups
called for violent jihad and were highly organised, well-funded and extremely capable.
In the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami, these two groups joined forces, creating leaflets and audio tapes supporting their radical ideology. They then sent delegations to all inhabited islands throughout the country and designated members of their group to stay and promote their views. They spread fear, hate and violence and chastised the population, telling islanders that the tsunami was the wrath of God, and they were responsible for it. The extent of their activities and hatred were not really felt until 29 September 2007, when a homemade bomb exploded in the Sultan Park in Malé. The bomb caused panic and injured 12 tourists (Niyaz, 2010). Gayoom was quick to blame it on pro- democratic activists, but this was the first time that the global phenomenon of “tourist terrorism” was felt in the country. Tourism is the main economic activity in the Maldives, and until that day the Maldives had been regarded as a safe destination with a clean track record (Niyaz, 2010). The Maldives has ratified eight of the twelve global conventions on terrorism. In addition, the Maldives has also ratified the SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism and the Additional Protocol to the SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism.
A further threat to the very survival of the Maldives as a sovereign nation is the threat of climate change and sea level rise from global warming. Due to the low-lying nature of the islands, the country is extremely vulnerable to tidal surges and beach erosion. Eighty per cent of the land area is less than one metre above mean sea level and 47 per cent of houses are less than 100 metres from the coastline. Since April 1987, adverse weather phenomena have resulted in a combination of high tides and storm surges being experienced throughout the
51 country especially during the rainy south-west monsoon season. According to data collected by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Housing, over 50 per cent of inhabited islands and over 45 per cent of tourist resorts have suffered various degrees of coastal erosion (MHAHE, 2002). A mean sea level rise of one metre, would risk the Maldives being completely submerged because of its low lying nature. Therefore, the very survival of the entire population of the Maldives is at stake.
Island erosion in Sh. Komandoo due to adverse weather phenomena Photo by DER
In November 2008, just after Mohamed Nasheed was elected as President of the Maldives, he proposed that the Maldives would begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland in another country - as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 315,000 islanders into environmental refugees (Ramesh, 2008). More recently, during the screening of the documentary movie, “The Island President” at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada, President Nasheed said that, “the most important right is the right to survival” (D’Arcy, 2011). In the case of the Maldives and other low-lying island states, the issue of climate change is not merely an environmental issue, but also a human rights and a security issue as rising sea levels and submerging of islands could threaten the right to life for these peoples.
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Conclusion
The country background provided above sets the scene for contextualising the findings which follow. It explains a number of aspects that have an influence on the factors that affect the development of a human rights respecting culture in the Maldives. The sea-locked geography and the low-lying nature of the islands play an important role in determining the identity of the 315,000 people dispersed over 200 islands. The relative isolation of the country and the lack of colonial influence have meant that the country has its own customs and traditions.
The Maldivian society traditionally cherished communitarian values which maximised societal harmony and minimalised destitution and crime. However, rapid urbanisation and the breakdown in family units have upset traditional social values. Combined with a growing drug problem, unrest and disquiet that lay beneath the surface in the late 1990s has been boiling over in the last few years. Lack of adequate housing, high unemployment rates and the absence of a proper social safety net, combined with widening inequalities has intensified social tensions.
Traditionally fisheries were the mainstay of the economy, but today tourism has become the largest contributor to the country’s GDP. In 1971, when the UN drew up the list of Least Developed Countries, the Maldives was included as one of the poorest 25 countries in the world. Today, the Maldives has graduated from that list as result of its developmental success. However, as striking as the growth in per capita income over the past 30 years is the growing inequality in the distribution of wealth not only between the capital and the atolls, but also between different segments of the population. This creates much disaffection and disharmony in the society.
English-medium education was introduced in the 1960s and even though there were no universities in the country until 2011, impressive strides have been made in the field of education, with 98 per cent literacy rates and a large
53 pool of university graduates by the end of the 20th century trained abroad
largely through scholarships from foreign donors. Tremendous progress was achieved in life expectancy and mortality rates from the late 1970s till today.
Although the Maldives converted to Islam in 1153, the country had always followed moderate traditions of Islam until the last few decades. The strict Shari’ah code has never been implemented in the country, and until recently women did not generally wear the hijab. Today, Islamist extremism is gaining ground and their impact was felt during the Sultan Park bombings in Male’ in 2007. While the country had a tradition of an independent judiciary, they were never based on any religious grounds. From 1967, the administration of justice had become an executive function until the current Constitution was adopted in 2008 which called for the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.
After the September 2003 incident of Evan Naseem’s death, mounting international as well as domestic pressure forced the Gayoom Government to introduce a number of reforms. These reforms reflected a new mind-set contrary to earlier reservations about universality of human rights norms, distrust of the international media, non-cooperation with international human rights organisations, and aversion to engaging with the international community. For thirty years, Gayoom had dominated the political scene, and in keeping himself in power, had greatly disregarded the Maldivian people’s basic rights. With the coming into power of the first democratically elected Nasheed Government in 2008, a number of changes are envisioned for the country. However, thirty years of autocratic rule and resistance to change are some of the challenges faced by the current Government.
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DISCOURSE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Introduction
One of the most important developments occurring in the world today is the concern over the observance of human rights. This chapter reviews the literature on human rights discourse. Today, with the dramatic changes that are taking place due to rapid communications and continual movement of goods, ideas, messages and persons across international borders, what happens in one country has significant implications for other countries. It is, therefore, inevitable that in the 21st century even small states like the Maldives cannot
escape from this global community and global concerns of the 21st century.
In this chapter, beginning with the concept of the term “human rights”, I examine the historical evolution of human rights as an international norm by describing the development of the International Bill of Human Rights by world leaders at the United Nations. Then, I present how human rights can be classified into different generations of rights, which provides a context for the analysis of my findings. Following that, I discuss briefly the controversies surrounding human rights, especially the ideological debates on universalism and cultural relativism, focussing particularly on the “Asian values” debate and the debate on Islam and human rights as these are important in understanding human rights in the Maldives. In this chapter, I also explore how international human rights are domesticated at the country level through the use of the five- phase spiral model and how this applies to the Maldives situation. I conclude the chapter by identifying some of the gaps in the literature and relating them to the significance of this study.
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