To bolster rights at home, Maldives must speak up for human rights abroad

As Asia’s smallest country struggles for lasting political stability, the right to speech and assembly are necessary rights that will put the Maldivian people in a position to peacefully resolve their political disputes and build a government that works for them. In so far as the Maldives continues to improve the human rights situation at home, it would also do well to publicly support human rights defenders abroad, especially in the places that the international community has identified as urgently in need of reform.

It is true that the Maldives itself has struggled to institutionalize democratic gains for most of the past 15 years. A critical next step the Maldives can take in order to assert its position as a legitimate democracy is to support the global human rights movement. One of the best ways it can do so is but voting to extend the United Nations mandate for a special rapporteur for human rights in a country which is one of the most egregious violators of international human rights standards, Iran. Until 2014, the Maldivian government’s aspiration toward more freedom and better human rights at home and abroad was demonstrated through its position at the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on resolutions supporting the special rapporteur’s mandate.

But in 2014 the Maldives changed its vote at the UN in supporting the continued mandate to investigate the human rights situation in Iran from “yes” to “absent,” and has unfortunately continued to vote this way ever since. It is our hope that this shift away from protection for human rights defenders abroad is neither permanent nor a reflection of the Maldives being intimidated by Iran.