Comment: Who will best protect our children?

What kind of a country do you want your children to grow up in? What are the values you want them to have? What does it mean to be a citizen of the Maldives? Why would your children be proud to be Maldivian?

As the Maldives prepares for Presidential elections, scheduled for 7 September 2013, political parties promise the population many policies geared to advance social progress and economic growth: more job opportunities, technologically advanced health care services, better access to education, and a reduction in poverty.

At face value they all pledge a promising future. Nonetheless as active citizens, it is important to analyse them in terms of their effectiveness given that the Maldives is a small island developing state and shares many characteristics with other such states: grappling with security issues, both internal security – gang violence, drug use, child sexual abuse – and external – global warming and sea level rise, tsunamis, recession in tourism source countries – and the smallness and remoteness creating high costs associated to goods and services.