These a posteriori Regulations claim as their legislative basis Article 8 of the Law on the Protection of the Rights of the Child (9/91), which states: Efforts must be made to discourage children from misbehaving and violating rules and regulations on the street and in public places. The Government must organise, in such manner as is possible at the time, the rehabilitation and upbringing of children who are not reformed by such efforts. It should be noted that the Regulations also state that children should not be sent to the centre to serve a sentence, and that a child who is serving sentence should not be held at the centre. This stipulation directly contradicts JJU’s mandate to deal specifically with juvenile offenders as discussed above. The UN Human Rights Committee has also stated that the relevant law on the basis of which administrative detention is ordered must have adequate clarity and regulate the procedure for the administrative detention (UNICEF 2011, 7). Article 8 of the Law on the Protection of the Rights of the Child (9/91) cited above is vague and does not clarify what is meant by ‘children who are not reformed by such efforts’. By what criteria are children to be judged as ‘not reformed’? To what does ‘such efforts’ to reform the misbehaving children refer? What are the ‘rules and regulations on the street and public streets’ it refers to? What do initial efforts ‘to discourage children from misbehaving’ refer to? These questions are left unanswered by the law, and nor are they answered by the Regulations on Isolation enacted on the basis of it. Apart from stating that the children who are detained at the centre should be ‘children who have been formally cautioned by the police or another official authority’ and ‘whose parents or guardians have been advised’ to look after the children properly, there are no clear guidelines that should be followed by the police or other authorities involved in making the decision to detain the child at the Centre (Article 15.a). The final decision to send a child to the detention centre, the Regulations state, ‘will be taken by the Committee’ [Juvenile Justice Coordination Committee]. According to the UN, if placing a child in administrative detention does not comply with domestic law, it will render the detention unlawful both in domestic and international law. It is imperative, therefore, that the legality of the Feydhoo Finolhu detention centre be properly assessed and reviewed as a matter of urgency. 61