Enough of Human Rights and Political Reform! Where is the Economic Reform?

Maldives has become probably the first micro-state to have a Human Rights Ambassador. This would be seen by many as an indication of our intention to proactively promote and internationally advocate for human rights. After all, why else would a country the size of Maldives opt to have a human rights ambassador? Most micro and small states that I know of limit their engagement in the area of human rights to the domestic front. Championing human rights, I don’t think, would be seen by many to be within the gamut of foreign policy of a microstate.

Over the last few years, we have done a remarkably good job in the area of human rights. In fact I can’t think of any other microstate that made the kind of strides we made in this area in such a short span of time. On the domestic front we developed a well functioning Human Right Commission. Internationally, we acceded to most of the international conventions such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Convention against Torture, the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women – just to name a few. We have also successfully completed the diffusion all the criticisms we faced in the aftermath of the 2003 jail shooting incident - kudos to Dr. Shaheed for what he did as Foreign Minister.

The bottom-line is, given the size of Maldives and its geopolitical significance, I believe we have put more than adequate resources in this area and we shouldn’t be spending any more of our meagre resources to venture into new areas in human rights. In fact we have been so much engrossed in human rights and political reforms that we have completely forgotten about other important areas such as economic reforms. Anymore resources and energy in this area is only going to further clog and dampen the much needed economic reforms.