1- 1- A small country of almost
2000 islands spread across the Indian Ocean, the Maldives has been undergoing
democratic transition only since 2008. It has faced challenges in consolidating
democratic institutions and culture, including the respective roles of the
judiciary, executive, parliament, independent institutions and civil society.
2- 2- The Maldives remains prone
to human rights impact from climate change and natural disasters. Over the
years, it has engaged positively with the international human rights system
with a number of treaties ratified and a standing invitation to Special
Procedures. In recent years, Maldives acceded to several key international
human rights instruments.
3- 3- The Government of Maldives
estimates suggest nearly a third of the Maldives’ populations of 300,000 are
migrant workers, of which up to 50,000 have irregular status. These are mainly
migrants from Bangladesh and India entering the construction and service
sectors who, whether documented or undocumented, are left vulnerable to
fraudulent recruitment, confiscation of identity and travel documents,
non-payment of wages and debt bondage. The Maldives is known to be a
destination country for human trafficking, including sex trafficking and
especially forced labour. The trafficking of Maldivian children within the
country is also an issue.
4- 4- Maldives is one of the 50
Bali Process countries and has in late 2013, passed a bill on anti-human
trafficking, which makes trafficking in persons a criminal offence with
perpetrators liable to 10 to 15 years imprisonment. The bill, which entered the
Maldivian parliament – the People’s Majlis – in April 2013, also criminalizes
offenses such as forced labor and fraudulent recruitment as acts of human
trafficking. The first piece of legislation that criminalizes human trafficking
is a huge stepping stone to addressing numerous migration challenges in the
Maldives. Maldives has in recent years made significant efforts to highlight at
the international level the potential risks of climate change, especially to
low lying islands such as theirs. They have also made important efforts at the
domestic level to provide assistance and facilitate durable solutions for the
estimated 12,000 persons internally displaced as a result of the 2004 tsunami,
and have put in place national development, disaster risk reduction plans, and
climate change adaptation strategies which address the socio-economic
dimensions of these issues as well as the need for physical protection.
5- 5- Potential internal
displacement in the future 12. As a small island nation, Maldives has a long
history of resilience in the face of its delicate geographic and environmental
profile. However, pressures in the form of climate change factors now increase
the threat of rising sea levels and sea temperatures, as well as more frequent
and severe weather events. A total of 90 inhabited islands have been flooded at
least once in the course of the last six years, and 37 islands have been
flooded regularly, at least once a year.12 Given that over 40 per cent of the
population and housing structures in Maldives are within 100 metres of the
coastline,13 flooding and other natural disaster risks threaten to damage
infrastructures and the provision of essential services potentially affecting
12 food security, livelihoods, health and the overall well-being of vulnerable
groups14 such as children, the elderly and the poor, in particular.
6- 6- Population density, salination, and coastal
erosion compound the social and economic vulnerabilities of the Maldives
population—which is already affected by the scarce existence of natural
resources, including land, and the lack of freshwater sources—rendering
eventual internal displacement inevitable for the inhabitants of many small
islands. This threat of internal displacement in Maldives is in the context of
other key concerns, which include the vast geographic expanse over which the
small islands are located, the difficulties in reaching and servicing these,
the lack of sufficient land, and the overcrowding in many of the more urbanized
or well-serviced islands, which precludes most IDPs from resettling there.
7- 7- Given the specific environmental and physical
characteristics of Maldives, the country is considered vulnerable to multiple
natural disaster risks, both sudden and slow-onset, which threaten the
infrastructure, biodiversity and environmental sustainability of many islands,
to the extent of potentially rendering them unfit for human habitation, or
requiring significant measures to rehabilitate or decongest them in the future.
Moreover, projections of a rise in sea levels of 88 cm between 1990 and 2100,
according to the worst-case scenario, would imply that many islands of Maldives
could be either submerged or uninhabitable,15 but also that many islands are
likely to face a severe risk of inundation much before that, as the sea rises.
Some experts believe that disaster risk reduction can perhaps delay this
prospect by decades.16 However, all of the above factors point to a situation
in which potentially important levels of internal displacement can be
anticipated, as well as a possible need in the future to find alternatives
outside the physical territory of Maldives.
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