Administrative detention? The status of the children detained at the centre in Feydhoo Finolhu can be regarded as children under administrative detention. While there is no internationally accepted comprehensive definition of administrative detention, a generally accepted description of administrative detentions provides that: Detention is considered administrative detention if de jure and/or de facto it has been ordered by the executive and the power of the decision rests solely with the administrative or ministerial authority, even if a remedy a posteriori (after the event) does exist in the courts against such a decision. The courts are responsible only for considering the lawfulness of this decision and/or its proper enforcement and not for taking the decision itself (UN Doc. E/CN.4/sub.2/1989/27, para.17) A study by the Child Protection Section of UNICEF published earlier this year, ‘Administrative Detention of Children: A Global Report’ (February 2011), states that administrative detention is recognised as legitimate under certain circumstances, provided that it ensures certain procedural guarantees. According to the study: Some States use administrative detention to respond to criminal or anti-social behaviour particularly by children living and working on the streets and by children under the minimum age of responsibility, or to ‘protect’ groups of children who are without family care or are the victims of, or witnesses to a crime and who are deemed in need of protection (UNICEF 2011, 4). The children detained in Feydhoo Finolhu fit into the first category of children who engage in anti-social behaviour. Further details on the profile of children who are typically put under administrative detention also broadly match those being held on the island of Feydhoo Finolhu: Certain groups of children are particularly vulnerable to administrative detention in this context. These include children whose parents are poor, who come from separated families, whose parents are absent, deceased or unable to care for them […]. The use of administrative detention in these circumstances is often aimed at children who are regarded by the public as a social ‘nuisance’ (UNICEF, Ibid). The most common reasons the study identified as driving such decision by States that indulge in the practice is also applicable in the case of the Maldivian State’s decision to detain these children at Feydhoo Finolhu: 59