8. Children’s Participation: General Attitudes Everything everyone says should be listened to. Everything that a child says should be listened to. If they come tomorrow and say: “Manma, I don’t want to be a Muslim”; we have to listen to that too. A son may say, I want to marry a man”; we have to listen to that too. Why don’t we just say we don’t agree to some of the clauses in the Convention? Why do we have to think that if something is said by someone wearing dhon dhavaadhu [white paint, inferring white skin], then it must be good! --Parent and teacher The above quote goes a long way in summing up some of the prevailing attitudes towards children’s rights among the general population in the Maldives: it is a ‘Western concept’ incompatible with the Maldivian culture and religion; adults know what is best for children; and it is silly to suggest that children should always be listened to. Underpinning these perceptions, again as the above quote shows, is a lack of knowledge about the philosophy behind the UNCRC and its vision for children as subjects of the rights that it enshrines. The strong convictions of the person quoted above [a parent and a teacher], are based on ignorance of both the UNCRC and the particulars of Maldives’ accession to the Treaty. The Maldives placed reservations to Article 14 and 21 upon signature twenty-one years ago: 1. Since the Islamic Shariah is one of the fundamental sources of Maldivian Law and since Islamic Shariah does not include the system of adoption among the ways and means for the protection and care of children contained in the Shariah, the Government of the Republic of Maldives expresses its reservation with respect to all the clauses and provisions relating to adoption in the said Convention on the Rights of the Child. 2. The Government of the Republic of Maldives expresses its reservation to paragraph 1 of the article 14 of the said Convention on the Rights of the Child, since the Constitution and the Laws of the Republic of Maldives stipulate that all Maldivians should be Muslims. The suspicion with which the concept of children’s rights as enshrined in the UNCRC is regarded is also evident from the following remarks by another parent: I have something to say about human rights […] when we talk about the rights of a particular group, like children’s rights for example […] it is expanded so much and becomes so big that it imposes itself on the rights of others. This is what happened with the rights of criminals as well. We need to think about this when we talk about rights […] when we are building our own fence, we must not expand it so much that we knockdown the next person’s fence along the way […] this is not right. The thinking behind this point of view, commonly shared, is that one person’s right is always gained at the expense of another’s, and that granting the rights of children would take away the 65