e. Encourage the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her wellbeing, bearing in mind the provisions of Article 13 and 18. In existing policy and legislative instruments related to children and media in the Maldives today, the focus is almost exclusively on the last of the above provisions (Article 17 (e)). That is, on developing appropriate guidelines to protect children from information and material that may harm children. Other duties enshrined in the above Article such as encouraging media to provide children with information and material that would be socially and culturally beneficial to them has, to a large extent, has been ignored in existing legislative instruments—including those enacted following the transition to democracy, and those that are now being drafted. Children were not consulted, for example, in the process of drafting the Broadcasting Regulations currently underway. Neither does the Regulations contain any provisions that make it obligatory for broadcasters to designate a particular percentage of their content to children’s programming, as is common practice in most liberal democracies across the world today22. It does ban any content that violates the rights and dignity of children (Article 30(f))23, and also marks the watershed hour as 9:00pm, stipulating that content broadcast between 6:00am to 9:00pm be suitable to persons of all ages (Article 32)24. Nor does the draft Regulations, currently open to comments from the general public, contain any provisions that make it obligatory upon the media to provide children with opportunities to participate in the media. The Broadcasting Act 2010, which underpins the new Regulations, is similarly lacking in focus on children. While there are strict regulations governing the type and percentage of local content that should be included in the material broadcast by any licensee, these do not include guidance on what children’s share of this content should be. The only stipulations regarding children in the Act is that ‘nothing should be broadcast that violates any rights of the child’25 and that all content should be clearly classified and rated according to their suitability to particular age groups26. Similarly, the Broadcasting License Agreement also emphasises the protection of children from harmful content while ignoring the State’s obligation to encourage children’s representation and participation in the media. The only substantial references to children in the Agreement, for 22 For an analysis of regulations in various democracies that require broadcasters to designate particular percentages of their content to children’s programming, see: Jack Blumenau, ‘Children’s media regulations: a report into state provisions for the protection and promotion of home-grown children’s media, (London: Save Kid’s TV April 2011), accessed http://www.savekidstv.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/SKTV-competitor-territory-research-postfinal-updated-24.4.11.pdf, November 12, 2011 23 Maldives Broadcasting Commission, “Broadcasting Regulations (First Draft)”, October 31, 2011, Accessed on November 20, 2011, http://www.broadcom.org.mv/dh/images/upload/1.%20Broadcast%20Regulation.pdf, 20 24 Ibid,, 21 25 Broadcasting Act 16/2010, Maldives Broadcasting Commission, accessed http://www.broadcom.org.mv/dh/images/upload/16-2010.pdf November 20, 2011 26 Ibid. 21