The Maldivian diaspora can be divided into two major subcategories: Maldivian citizens living abroad and Dhivehi speaking communities with no legal connection to the Maldivian state. The 2014 census found a total of 5,589 Maldivian citizens living abroad.[8] However, there is little information on the exact size of the non-citizen Dhivehi speaking diaspora. While a 2011 UNESCO report found that the majority of Maldivian citizens living outside of the Maldives were sailors operating foreign commercial vessels, Maldivians have also left their country for political, economic, and academic reasons.[9]
The majority of Maldivian speakers living abroad can currently be found in India and Sri Lanka. Maldivians in India, the largest community of Maldivians abroad, are predominantly found in the union territory of Lakshadweep that lies off the coast of the Indian mainland. Ethnic Maldivians living in Lakshadweep are concentrated on the island of Minicoy, an Indian territory of the Maldive Islands. These Maldivians are known as the Mahl people. The first Maldivians in Sri Lanka are thought to have migrated to the island nation centuries ago, but many still maintain their cultural ties to the greater Maldivian community.
While the largest Maldivian communities outside of the Maldives can be found in India and Sri Lanka, there are currently numerous Maldivians in Pakistan as well. These Maldivians are largely students who travel to Pakistan to study in madrassas across the country.[10]
Politics
Political repression is one reason many Maldivians have chosen to emigrate. Many journalists have been arrested after expressing anti-government views, and some have disappeared entirely under suspicious circumstances. Journalists have even been sentenced to death for their reporting, at least five of whom were below the age of 18. In 2017, four independent Maldivian journalists living abroad were threatened with arrest for espousing pro-democratic and openly secular viewpoints on their respective blogs.[11]Human rights observers such as Amnesty International have noted that the criminal justice system has been used to silence political opponents as well as the free press.[12]
Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, also found himself living in exile in the United Kingdom after being charged with terrorism in a 2015 trial many outside observers perceived as being politically motivated. After the charges were cleared by the Maldives' Supreme Court in 2018, Nasheed announced that he would run against the previously unopposed President Abdulla Yameen in the upcoming 2018 presidential election.[13] Nasheed's presidential campaign has included numerous trips to Maldivian communities living outside of the Maldives, such as the sizable Maldivian community in Sri Lanka.[14] However, it remains unclear whether the Yameen administration will bow to U.N. pressure and allow Mohamed Nasheed to run as a candidate in the 2018 election.[15]
Maldivians have also left the country in order to fight for various insurgent groups such as the Islamic State. In fact, a 2015 study by The Soufan Group found the Maldives to be the world's greatest supplier per-capita of independent foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria.[16] Many of these insurgent fighters have been known to bring their families with them, either immediately or a few months after becoming established in their new location. Maldivian foreign fighters have become radicalized in both Malé and the Maldives' many smaller island communities.[17] Some have attributed the proportionally high number of radicalized individuals leaving the Maldives to fight in conflicts abroad to the growing strength of the Islamist movement in the country and the Yameen administration's newfound support for its proponents.[18]
Education
A significant percentage of Maldivians living abroad are students pursuing an education at various foreign universities. Maldivian students go abroad for both secular and religious educations and often find themselves studying in universities and madrassas in Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, India, Sri Lanka, and other countries. A 2011 UNESCO report found that approximately 1,200 Maldivian students were studying abroad in 2007.[9][19] This student diaspora can in large part be attributed to the lack of educational facilities on most of the Maldives' islands. Until recently, the only secondary education provider was located in Malé.[20] Some wealthy Maldivians have also chosen to migrate in order to ensure that their children will have access to superior primary, secondary, and tertiary educational facilities.[21]
Economy
Youth unemployment is a growing social issue in the Maldives. 45% of the population was under 24 years of age as of 2014, and the competition for work among young Maldivians remains severe. A 2010 study found that the unemployment rate in the Maldives was 25% for those between 15 and 24. Youth unemployment has become a major reason for emigration from the Maldives.[22] Maldivians often consider migrating in order to improve their access to financial resources, especially the wealth of job opportunities that exist in foreign countries. In fact, Maldivians’ primary migration-related interests remain jobs. When young Maldivians move abroad for work, older members of their families sometimes join them as migrants in order to continue living alongside their children and grandchildren. This pattern of migration can also be seen in Maldivians moving from the outlying islands to Malé.[21]
Maldivians also choose to move abroad because the cost of living in Malé is higher than most places in Sri Lanka and India.[20] Some also attribute this migration to a lack of housing and overcrowding around the Maldivian capital, a problem which has grown increasingly pressing as Maldivians continue to migrate from the outer islands to the capital.[21]
Healthcare
The government of the Maldives has recently made efforts to deepen its relationship with Maldivians living abroad. In 2013, the government expanded the Maldives' universal health insurance, Aasandha, to Maldivians living abroad in Sri Lanka and India provided they visit a select few "empanelled" hospitals. This expansion of health insurance to Maldivians living abroad has come under criticism given the poor state of the Maldivian healthcare system and the difficulty many Maldivians currently face finding adequate healthcare services in their home country.[23]
Climate
The Maldives has, in recent years, become one of the epicenters of the climate refugee debate. The Maldives has an average estimated elevation of 1.5 meters above sea-level, with 80 percent of its islands currently resting less than 1 meter above sea-level.[20] The total landmass of the islands is continuously decreasing due to rising sea-levels, and many of the smaller islands are thought to be years away from becoming completely submerged. Climate change has recently become a long-term security issue for the Maldives which, according to numerous climate scientists, could disappear entirely within one or two centuries.[24]
Rising ocean temperatures are also a major environmental challenge facing the Maldives. Rising sea surface temperatures cause significant damage to coral reefs, which serve as natural breakwaters. The death of the coral reefs surrounding the Maldives could lead to the loss of the natural protection those reefs provide from waves and currents, in turn increasing the likelihood of beach erosion. The rise in sea surface temperatures also leads to coral bleaching. A significant increase in the water temperature causes coral to expel the zooxanthellae which live in the tissue of the coral, making the coral turn white in color. Since the devastating El Niño of 1998, marine biologists in the Maldives have been particularly concerned about the impact on the local marine environment. Since 2015 was the warmest year on record, by September 2015, many coral reefs in the Maldives had become severely bleached. The rapid degradation of the coral reefs around the Maldives could negatively influences the country's tourism industry, which currently makes up 34% of the Maldives's GDP. Fishing, the country's second largest industry, could also be affected by climate change. Fish might migrate to other ocean areas if the sea temperatures around the Maldives continue to increase, which could lead to a decrease in the country's GDP as high as 7%.[20]
Several kinds of natural disasters affect the Maldives, including tsunamis, cyclones, earthquakes, thunderstorms, and flash floods caused by heavy rains and swell waves. The threats posed by many of these environmental hazards have been amplified by climate changes in recent decades. Rainfall has been erratic and drought patterns have changed, causing prolonged dry seasons and unusual monsoon patterns.[20] This directly affects the Maldives’ agriculture, causing the already limited farmland to shrink continuously. As a consequence, the country has had to depend on imported goods for a steadily increasing percentage of its food supply. For the same reason, communities have had to manage increasingly saline groundwater. The majority of islands in the Maldives do not have a secure supply of fresh water or distribution networks that can ensure sufficient safe freshwater during dry periods. It is also due to these prolonged dry periods that many islands have experienced severe shortages of drinking water, often necessitating emergency water supply initiatives on the part of the government. Freshwater security is currently a pressing issue in the Maldives.[20]
Many climate related diseases, such as dengue and scrub typhus, have also become more common. The incidence of these vector-borne diseases in the Maldives are expected to steadily increase over the next few decades. In December 2006, the country had its first outbreak of Chikungunya, another climate related vector-borne disease.[20]
While many Maldivians are expected to become either climate refugees or internally displaced due to rising sea levels, the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees does not recognize climate change as a valid reason for refugee status.[25] While the ongoing environmental changes have affected housing, freshwater access, food production, and fisheries, Maldivians are currently more likely to consider leaving their homeland in order to improve their financial education or to receive a tertiary education. In fact, migration is only one of the strategies being considered by the government of the Maldives for dealing with the threat posed by climate change.[26]
Government response
In 2008, the government of Mohamed Nasheed began to spend a portion of its annual tourist revenue on the search for a new homeland. Nasheed argued that "We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis [began by buying] land in Palestine."[27] Before his ouster in 2012, Nasheed launched numerous initiatives and publicity stunts in order to raise global awareness about the threat posed by rising sea levels to the Maldives. One of the most famous of which was an underwater cabinet meeting in which he and his cabinet donned scuba gear in order to discuss state environmental policies at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in 2009.[28] In 2012, the Nasheed administration set aside a sovereign savings account with which to buy land in Australia in preparation for the eventual evacuation of the citizens of the Maldives from their country.[29] However, the Nasheed administration also considered moving the country's population to India or Sri Lanka as well.[30]
After Nasheed's close defeat in the contested elections that proceeded his ouster, he was replaced by Abdulla Yameen. The Yameen administration has been less concerned with the environmental threat to the Maldives and reemphasized the need to focus on development and foreign investment.[31] This move has been criticized by Nasheed and his supporters as politically motivated and a Chinese bid for influence over the islands. However, the Yameen administration has touted Chinese investment as a critical factor in the land restoration projects being pursued by his administration in order to preserve the islands. Numerous policy analysts have pointed to the conflict between proponents of land restoration and proponents of relocation in the Maldives as part of the greater struggle between China and India for influence in South Asia.[32]
Both the Maldivian government and a number of external research agencies have considered numerous methods for adapting to and overcoming the environmental problems currently facing the Maldives. Their proposals include sea walls, land reclamation, expansion of beach vegetation, population relocation, flood warning systems, and large-scale island expansion and reconstruction. The Maldivian government has put some of these suggestions into practice, but there are still major uncertainties regarding future climate change and its impact.[26] While the current policies of the Yameen administration indicate that the mass migration of the Maldives' residents to Australia or Sri Lanka is no longer the government's primary strategy for dealing with rising sea levels, it remains to be seen how future administrations will deal with this problem.
International assistance
International organizations such as the World Bank have provided assistance to the Maldives in order to help it mitigate the environmental and socio-economic problems which have led to emigration from the country. This assistance has taken the form of improving the economic opportunities available to the local population both in the island nation's traditional economic areas such as tourism and fishing as well as entirely new industries. Such assistance has also strengthened the Maldives' capacity for natural resource management and climate resilience, as well as enhanced its ability to manage its public finances efficiently. The World Bank Group also provides consultation in policy-making.[22]
The Maldives also regularly receives economic aid from countries such as Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. Between 1987 and 2002, Japan helped construct six kilometers of coastal protection works around the city of Malé in order to protect the capital from major storms, tsunamis, and the constant threat of sea level rise.[33] After the completion of these coastal barriers, Japan has continued to be a major supplier of economic aid and other forms of non-monetary assistance to the Maldives.
Criticism of the term "climate migrants"
Phrases such as "climate refugees" and "climate migrants" have come under an increasing amount of scrutiny by various political analysts and researchers.[34] Some analysts, such as Robert Stojanov and Ilan Kelman, have suggested the Maldivian government should, instead of simply responding to climate change in a vacuum, place climate change within wider development contexts, such as employment, education, health care, public services and the livelihoods of Maldivian citizens. They argue that climate change must always be considered in relation to other social and environmental issues, especially considering the fact that climate change is currently far from the dominant reason behind emigration from the Maldives. These critics believe that a more nuanced analysis of Maldivian social and environmental conditions would allow the government to make migration-related policies based on more than assumptions about climate change.[26]
The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, and historically known as the Maldive Islands, is a country and archipelagic state in South Asia in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is southwest of Sri Lanka and India, about 750 kilometres from the Asian continent's mainland. The Maldives' chain of 26 atolls stretches across the equator from Ihavandhippolhu Atoll in the north to Addu Atoll in the south.
The history of the Maldives is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions, comprising the areas of South Asia and Indian Ocean. The modern nation consists of 26 natural atolls, comprising 1194 islands. Historically, the Maldives has held a strategic importance due to its location on the major marine routes of the Indian Ocean. The Maldives's nearest neighbours are the British Indian Ocean Territory, Sri Lanka and India. The United Kingdom, Sri Lanka and some Indian kingdoms have had cultural and economic ties with the Maldives for centuries. In addition to these countries, Maldivians also traded with Aceh and many other kingdoms in what is today Indonesia and Malaysia. The Maldives provided the main source of cowrie shells, then used as a currency throughout Asia and parts of the East African coast. Most probably, Maldives were influenced by Kalingas of ancient India who were earliest sea traders to Sri Lanka and the Maldives from India, and who were responsible for the spread of Buddhism. Stashes of Chinese crockery found buried in various locations in the Maldives also show that there was direct or indirect trade contact between China and the Maldives. In 1411 and 1430, the Chinese admiral Zheng He (鄭和) visited the Maldives. The Chinese also became the first country to establish a diplomatic office in the Maldives, when the Chinese nationalist government based in Taipei opened an embassy in Malé in 1966. This office has since been replaced by the Embassy of the People's Republic of China.
In ancient times, Maldives were renowned for cowries, coir rope, dried tuna fish, ambergris (maavaharu) and coco de mer (tavakkaashi). Local and foreign trading ships used to load these products in the Maldives and bring them abroad.
Maldives is an island country in the Indian Ocean, South Asia, south-southwest of India. It has a total land size of 298 km2 (115 sq mi) which makes it the smallest country in Asia. It consists of approximately 1,190 coral islands grouped in a double chain of 26 atolls, spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometers, making this one of the most geographically dispersed countries in the world. It has the 31st largest exclusive economic zone of 923,322 km2 (356,497 sq mi). Composed of live coral reefs and sand bars, the atolls are situated atop a submarine ridge, 960 km (600 mi) long that rises abruptly from the depths of the Indian Ocean and runs from north to south. Only near the southern end of this natural coral barricade do two open passages permit safe ship navigation from one side of the Indian Ocean to the other through the territorial waters of Maldives. For administrative purposes the Maldives government organized these atolls into twenty-one administrative divisions.
The Maldives has remained an independent nation throughout its recorded history, save for a brief spell of Portuguese occupation in the mid-16th century. From 1887 to 1965, the country was a British protectorate while retaining full internal sovereignty. At its independence in 1965, the Maldives joined the United Nations on 20 September.
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is a Maldivian diplomat and politician who served as President of the Maldives from 1978 to 2008. After serving as transport minister, he was nominated president by the People's Majlis and succeeded Ibrahim Nasir in 1978. He was defeated in 2008 during the first Presidential Elections after democratic reforms in the Maldives. He holds the nations highest award, "The Most Honourable Order of Distinguished Rule of Ghaazee", presented to him in 2013. Maumoon was the longest-serving president in Asia.
Tourism is the largest economic industry in the Maldives, as it plays an important role in earning foreign exchange revenues and employing 25,000 people in the tertiary sector of the country. The archipelago of the Maldives is the main source of attraction to many tourists visiting the island country. Chinese entrepreneurs have been swiftly amassing assets connected to the tourism sector in the Maldives. Given that tourism is the primary economic driver in the Maldives, this trend is affording the Chinese substantial influence over the nation's economy.
The Maldivian Democratic Party is the first political party formed in the Republic of Maldives with a total membership of 51,516 individuals as of 25 April 2024.
Kudafari is one of the inhabited islands of Noonu Atoll.
Mohamed Nasheed GCSK, also known as Anni, is a Maldivian politician and activist who served as president of the Maldives from 2008 until his resignation in 2012. A founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party, he subsequently served as the 19th speaker of the People's Majlis from May 2019 until his resignation in November 2023. He is the first democratically elected president of the Maldives and the only president to resign from office. He is currently a member of The Democrats.
Velana International Airport (VIA), also known as Malé-Velana International Airport is the main international airport in the Maldives. It is located on Hulhulé Island in the southern Malé Atoll, nearby the capital island Malé. The airport is well connected with major airports around the world, mostly serving as the main gateway into the Maldives for tourists. It is managed financially and administratively by a state owned company known as Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL).
India and Maldives are neighbours sharing a maritime border. India continues to contribute to maintaining security as well as providing financial aid on the island nation.
Maldives–Pakistan relations are the foreign relations between Pakistan and the Maldives.
Maldives–Sri Lanka relations, or official and economic relations between the neighbouring Indian Ocean countries of the Maldives and Sri Lanka, have been positive since the Maldives became independent in 1965. The Maldives first established a mission in Sri Lanka in July 1965, and today has a High Commission in Colombo. Sri Lanka has a High Commission in Malé. Both countries were founding members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in December 1985.
Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom is a Maldivian politician who served as president of the Maldives from 2013 to 2018.
Diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Maldives were established in 1972. China has an embassy in Malé which opened in November 2011, and the Maldives has an embassy in Beijing which opened in 2009. Approximately 70 percent of the Maldives' total debt is attributed to Chinese projects, with an annual payment of US$92 million to China, constituting around 10 percent of the country's entire budget. China has become pervasive in the Maldives, exerting influence over infrastructure, trade, and energy sectors, raising concerns of a new form of Chinese entrapment.
Presidential elections were held in the Maldives on Sunday, 23 September 2018. Incumbent president Abdulla Yameen of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) was seeking re-election for a second five-year term. His only challenger was Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), who was nominated as the joint candidate of a coalition of opposition parties.
Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, commonly known as Ibu, is a Maldivian politician who served as president of the Maldives from 2018 to 2023.
Climate change is a major issue for the Maldives. As an archipelago of low-lying islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean, the existence of the Maldives is severely threatened by sea level rise. By 2050, 80% of the country could become uninhabitable due to global warming. According to the World Bank, with "future sea levels projected to increase in the range of 10 to 100 centimeters by the year 2100, the entire country could be submerged". The Maldives is striving to adapt to climate change, and Maldivian authorities have been prominent in international political advocacy to implement climate change mitigation.
Maldivian presidential assassination attempts have been numerous, ranging from the early twentieth century since the establishment of the first republic of the Maldives. In 1980, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was first Maldivian president to experience an assassination attempt, when three attempts to overthrow Maumoon's government and assassinate the president.
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