For staff at the Centre, ‘it is not really a job, but life itself’, as they are on call 24/7 even if they are not on actual duty. The desperate shortage of staff has also meant that any child who can be sent back to their families are sent back for the entire duration of the end of the year school holidays. This, according to some members of staff, causes many children to relapse back into old habits and behaviours that led to their detention in the first place, undoing the slow and often painful progress that they had made during their stay at the facility. ‘It means we often have to start all over again,’ one member of staff said. Experiences of children at Maafushi Children at Maafushi are not aware of their rights to participation, or of any other rights afforded to them by the UNCRC. None of them are properly informed of the reasons why they are at the Centre, nor are they given any clear indications as to why they have been detained, how long they can expect to be there, and what the procedures are for leaving. Many were left completely in the dark by their families about their intentions to send them Maafushi—some children only found out en route or once they arrived at the centre. A 12-year-old boy who has now been at the centre for over a year said: My sister brought me here. She told me that we were going to Male’. It was only when we were on the flight over that she said this is where we were coming. He said he guessed from the name of the centre—still often referred to informally by its earlier name, Islaahiyya [Reformatory]—what the place was about. He was not told anything about it beforehand. His family, who are from an island in the far north of the country, have not been to visit him since. Asked if he knew how and when he would be able to leave, he said ‘when I am 18.’ He said there was a lot of bullying among the children, with the older and more boisterous children often picking on the younger and weaker detainees. Another boy, 13 years of age, wanted the opportunity to speak specifically because he had a particular plea to make: ‘Please let me go’, he said. He had been sent to the centre by the Ministry of Family and the police who, he said, had persuaded his mother this was the best place for him. He himself had not been consulted nor told about the Centre, or why the adults thought it was the best place for him. His 15-year-old brother, also detained at the centre, expressed the same wish to go home. He said he wanted to look after his mother who was sick—this being the reason that he was sent to the centre in the first place. As far as he knew, the adults in his life together with the Family Ministry made the decision to send him away because he had not been studying properly, and had been on the streets. He did not know anything about how he could leave the place before he was eighteen. 53