Youth Voice: This article was written by Sarraa Shah a 19-year-old youth advocate to highlight the lived realities, challenges, and aspirations of young Maldivian women seeking opportunities within the tourism sector. On the small island of Fulidhoo, where the rhythm of life follows the tides and the sun, 20-year-old Zara wakes before dawn. The sea that surrounds her home is the same sea that carries thousands of tourists each year to luxury resorts—places filled with opportunity, yet just out of reach.Zara lives with her parents, both in their 50s, and her two younger siblings, aged five and eight. Like many families across the Maldives, her household can no longer rely on a single income. She knows she must work. She wants to work. And like many young Maldivian women, she dreams of joining the tourism sector, the backbone of her country's economy.But for Zara, this dream comes with a painful question: Who will take care of her family if she leaves?A Dream Interrupted by RealityTourism jobs in the Maldives are rarely close to home. Resorts are scattered across isolated islands, often requiring workers to live on-site for weeks at a time. For Zara, accepting a job would mean leaving her siblings behind, missing their school milestones, their laughter, and their need for guidance.No childcare facilities in staff accommodations.No family housing.No easy way to return home after a shift.Even a single day off is often consumed by long, exhausting travel across the atolls.For Zara, working in tourism does not just mean employment; it means separation.The Hidden Cost for WomenZara's story is not unique. Across the Maldives, women face systemic barriers that make participation in tourism difficult:Many women leave their jobs after starting families, with little support to return.There are few re-skilling or re-entry programs.Flexible work arrangements are nearly non-existent.Senior roles are often filled by expatriates rather than local women.Despite hospitality being deeply rooted in Maldivian culture, women like Zara struggle to move beyond entry-level roles, or even to enter the workforce at all.Imagine the contrast: about 65% of tourism workers are expatriates, even though policies aim for a majority local workforce. The gap between policy and reality leaves many capable Maldivian women without opportunities.A Workforce Gap—and an OpportunityIn the coming years, the tourism sector will need up to 25,000 workers, yet only a fraction of that number will come from the local population. This gap presents a powerful opportunity: investing in Maldivian women.Imagine if Zara could work at a resort that offered:Safe, accessible childcare.Family-friendly accommodations.Flexible rotation allows meaningful time at home.Mentorship programs pairing local workers with experienced professionals.These changes would not just transform Zara's life; they would strengthen families, communities, and the entire economy.Zara's FutureZara still dreams of working in tourism. She imagines welcoming guests from around the world, sharing her culture, and earning enough to support her family.But she also dreams of being present—for her siblings, for her parents, and for the life she already has.She should not have to choose.Be Part of the ChangeYour contribution can help create a future where women like Zara do not have to leave their families behind to build a career. A future in which the tourism industry reflects the people and culture of the Maldives.Support initiatives by the UNFPA and help unlock the potential of thousands of women, because when Zara succeeds, her whole community rises with her. This article is first published at UNFPA Maldives website on Investing in the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation: Why Sustained Commitment Matters in the Maldives   To learn more about the works of UNFPA Maldives Please go to maldives.office@unfpa.org.(3) UNFPA Maldives (@UNFPAMaldives) / X UNFPA Maldives (@unfpamaldives) • Instagram photos and videos

An opinion editorial by Dr. Edward Addai, UNICEF Representative to MaldivesEvery parent remembers a moment when they wished a child came with an instruction manual: whether it was the sleepless nights of infancy, the first day of school or the difficult conversations that emerge during adolescence, parenting does not come with a one-size-fits-all kit. In fact, it is one of the most important responsibilities any person can undertake, yet it is also one of the few for which no formal training is provided. For generations, parenting knowledge was passed down naturally within families and close-knit communities. Grandparents, neighbours, aunts, uncles, teachers, and community leaders all played an essential role in guiding children and supporting caregivers along the way.Today, however, these traditional support systems are changing. Across Maldives, as in many parts of the world, families are raising children in contexts that are more complex and fast-moving than ever before. Parents are navigating a world shaped by digital technologies, evolving family structures, economic pressures, climate uncertainty, and rapidly shifting social expectations. These changes are opening new opportunities for children, but they are also placing new demands on caregivers.In this context, the need to better support parents and caregivers is not only timely—it is essential.Families: the first layer of protection and development Families are the first and most important environment in which children grow, learn, and develop. Long before a child enters school, interacts with public services, or engages with wider society, they experience the world through their relationships with parents and caregivers.These early relationships shape children's health, learning, wellbeing, confidence, and ability to thrive throughout their lives.The evidence is clear: when parents and caregivers are supported, children are more likely to grow up healthy, safe, educated, and protected. Positive parenting contributes to stronger emotional wellbeing, improved educational outcomes, reduced exposure to violence, and greater resilience.This is why parenting is not simply a private family matter. It is a child rights issue, a development issue, and an investment in the future of society.The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises parents as the primary caregivers and guides in a child's life. At the same time, it recognises that governments, communities, and institutions share responsibility for creating the conditions that enable families to fulfil this role.Parenting support as a shared system of responsibilityToo often, parenting is viewed as a responsibility that families must navigate alone. In reality, parents' ability to provide the care, protection, and guidance children need is shaped by the systems and support available around them. Whether it is health services providing advice on child development, teachers engaging caregivers in children's learning, workplaces adopting family-friendly policies, or social workers, health professionals, educators, and community leaders working together to strengthen families, each contributes to supporting parents in their vital role. Parenting support is therefore not a single programme or intervention; it is an ecosystem of services, policies, and social norms that enables families to help children grow up safe, healthy, educated, and protected.In Maldives, UNICEF is working with government partners to strengthen this ecosystem through initiatives such as the Beleniveriyaa - Joint Positive Parenting Programme, which provides parents and caregivers with practical knowledge and skills to support children's healthy development, positive behaviour, learning, and wellbeing. By creating opportunities for parents to learn, reflect, and connect with others facing similar challenges, the programme helps strengthen caregivers' confidence and capacity to nurture children in a rapidly changing world.Such initiatives demonstrate that supporting parents is not simply about providing information. It is about creating sustained systems of support that empower families and contribute to stronger outcomes for children. Many of the challenges affecting children and adolescents today—including mental health concerns, violence, school disengagement, and online risks—cannot be addressed by children themselves, nor by parents acting in isolation, but stronger systems around families.Strengthening systems that enable parenting As Maldives advances its development agenda, the focus must shift from recognising the importance of parenting support to ensuring that it is consistently embedded within national systems and delivered at scale.This means moving from fragmented efforts to a coordinated approach where parenting support is integrated across health, education, and social protection services. Every contact point between families and public systems should serve as an opportunity to strengthen parenting knowledge, confidence, and practice.It also requires ensuring continuity of support across the full trajectory of childhood and adolescence. Parenting needs are evolving over time, from early nurturing and protection in infancy to guidance, communication, and trust-building during adolescence. Systems must therefore be designed to adapt alongside these changing developmental stages.Equally important is ensuring equity of access. Families across all islands must be able to access timely, relevant, and culturally appropriate support, regardless of geography or socioeconomic status.Within this context, initiatives such as the Beleniveriyaa programme reflect an important shift toward embedding parenting support within existing service delivery platforms, rather than treating it as a standalone or optional intervention. This approach helps ensure that parenting support becomes a consistent and integrated feature of how services are delivered to families.Strengthening these systems is not an additional layer of investment; it is central to improving outcomes for children and ensuring that national progress is both inclusive and sustainable.A collective commitment to children and families Global Parenting Month is not only a moment to recognise the dedication of parents and caregivers. It is also an opportunity to reaffirm what the evidence has long made clear: no parent raises a child alone, and no child thrives in isolation.Children’s outcomes are shaped not only within the home, but by the environments in which families live, learn, work, and access services. When these environments are supportive, predictable, and inclusive, parents are better equipped to provide the care, guidance, and stability that children need at every stage of development.This is why strengthening support for families must be a shared national priority. It requires sustained commitment across government, schools, health systems, workplaces, communities, and civil society to ensure that parenting support is not fragmented or dependent on circumstances, but consistently available to every family.As Maldives continues its development journey, the challenge is not the absence of commitment from parents. It is the need to ensure that systems and institutions are equally strong in supporting them, so that every caregiver, in every island, has access to the knowledge, services, and enabling conditions needed to raise children who can thrive.UNICEF remains committed to working alongside the Government of Maldives and partners to strengthen these systems, expand access to quality parenting support, and ensure that every child grows up in a safe, nurturing, and enabling environment.The future of the Maldives will be shaped by the children growing up today. That future will be determined not only by the dedication of families, but by the strength of the systems that stand behind them. This article is first published at UNICEF Maldives website on Parenting in a changing Maldives: why supporting parents matter now more than ever To learn more about the works of UNICEF Maldives Please go to UNICEF Maldives

Written by : Shaima Mufeed, Programme Officer - Mental Health, UNICEF MaldivesWhen news of a suicide spreads across an island community, the silence that follows is never truly silent. It moves through WhatsApp groups and gatherings, through whispers and family dinner tables. It enters the minds of young people who are already struggling to name what they feel. And in that circulation, it does something. The question we have not asked loudly enough is: what?For too long, the answer has been shaped more by habit than intention. We have grieved publicly and incautiously. We have shared details that should have stayed quiet. We have framed tragedy in ways that, however unintentionally, made the unthinkable feel familiar, even logical, to minds already searching for a way out of their own pain.This is not a failure of compassion. It is a failure of awareness. And it is one we have the knowledge, the tools, and the community to correct.The story that started a contagionIn 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel about a young man who, consumed by unrequited love and a sense of futility, takes his own life. The book became one of the literary sensations of its age. It also, by most accounts, triggered a wave of imitative suicides across Europe. Young men dressed like Werther. They carried the novel. They died the same way.Two centuries later, the sociologist David Phillips gave this phenomenon a name and a framework. Analyzing suicide rates in the weeks following prominent media coverage of high-profile deaths, he demonstrated a consistent pattern: detailed, emotionally resonant, widely circulated narratives of suicide measurably increase suicidal behavior in the populations that consume them. He called this the Werther Effect.The mechanism is not a crude imitation. It is something psychologically subtler, and therefore more dangerous: identification. When a vulnerable person encounters a narrative that mirrors their own distress, which describes the same loneliness, the same trapped feeling, the same exhaustion that has no name, they do not consciously decide to replicate what they have read. They experience recognition and the realization that another person understood exactly what they felt. And in that recognition, a door that was previously invisible becomes visible. Suicide ceases to be unthinkable. It becomes, in the most chilling sense of the word, an option.The risk intensifies when narratives are repeated, emotionally saturated, and stripped of complexity. When a life of invisible suffering is reduced to a single, tidy cause such as a failed relationship, public shaming, or a poor examination result, it creates a false sense of inevitability. It tells every watching mind: this is what this feeling leads to.In digital environments, this process does not slow down but accelerates. Algorithms reward emotional intensity. Content that provokes grief or shock travels faster and further than content that is measured or hopeful.  Why Maldives is especially vulnerableThere are places in the world where stories stay local. Maldives is not one of them. In an island nation bound by kinship, shared faith, and near-total social media penetration, information does not travel, but floods. A post shared in a private group becomes common knowledge before anyone has considered whether it should be.This is the geography of our vulnerability. The same intimacy that makes island life sustaining, such as the dense networks of mutual recognition, the impossibility of anonymity, the community that holds you even when you did not ask to be held, also creates conditions in which grief circulates without pause and without filter. Young people who are already struggling are repeatedly exposed to narratives of loss. Without counterweight, without careful framing, these narratives accumulate into something more than grief. They become a cognitive environment.Compounding this is the persistent stigma that surrounds mental health in our communities. Where open, compassionate conversation about psychological distress is constrained by shame or judgment, young people turn to informal spaces such as group chats, comment sections, and peer networks as their primary sources of understanding. In the absence of anything better, those spaces fill the vacuum. They shape perception by default. And they are largely unguided.Yet this same quality, this capacity for rapid, intimate, community-wide connection, is also our greatest protective asset. The same channels that can spread harmful narratives can spread hope with equal velocity. The same social density that amplifies risk can amplify resilience; if we choose to use it that way. The question before us is not whether we will talk about suicide. The question is how. With what words. And to what end.In practice, harmful narratives can look like:Sharing the method or location of a death on social media, however sympathetically framedFraming suicide as the inevitable consequence of a single event, such as a breakup, an exam failure, or a public humiliationPosting photographs, personal messages, or details that romanticize or memorialize the act itselfDescribing the person who died as finally at peace, free, or beyond pain, without acknowledging the tragedy of that lossSpeculating publicly about motive in ways that simplify complex, invisible emotional experiences into a single explanationRepeatedly resharing coverage that itself violates safe messaging principles, extending its reach and emotional intensityWhy national guidance on this is a public health interventionWhen the Media Guideline on Reporting Mental Health in Maldives discourages detailed descriptions of suicide methods and urges the consistent inclusion of help-seeking information in all coverage, it is not being overly cautious. It is not sanitizing grief or denying death its weight. It is doing precisely what public health policy is designed to do: interrupt a known pathway of harm before it reaches those most at risk.The logic is identical to food safety standards or road design requirements. We do not wait for preventable accidents and then study their patterns before acting. We build protections based on what we already know about how harm spreads.What national guidance also addresses is the structural role of stigma. Communication guidelines that insist on respectful, person-centered language that models the normalcy of distress and the acceptability of help-seeking are not merely stylistic preferences. They are structural interventions in the conditions that allow suffering to become invisible until it is too late. Reclaiming the narrative: the Papageno effectIn Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, the comic character Papageno, who is described as lovesick, despairing, and on the verge of ending his life, is talked back from the edge by three spirits. He is not diagnosed or lectured at. He is simply accompanied and reminded that he is not alone, that his suffering is known, and that there is still something on the other side of this moment worth reaching for. He goes on. He finds love. He lives.Researchers studying protective media narratives named a phenomenon after him: the Papageno effect. It describes something measurable and reproducible: stories of people who faced suicidal crises and found a way through, actively reduces suicidal ideation in those who hear them. Not by minimizing the reality of pain. Not by offering false reassurance but by expanding what feels possible within the pain and demonstrating that the state is survivable.This is the narrative shift we need. Not silence, as silence has protected no one. But stories told differently: stories in which distress is visible and real, and in which people move through it. Stories in which seeking help is not a sign of inadequate faith or personal failure, but a form of courage the community recognizes and honours. Stories that do not conclude with a death, but with a phone call answered, a conversation that changed something, a morning that arrived after a night that seemed like it would not end.The emerging visibility of campaigns like Kihineh? is evidence that Maldivians are ready for this. What is required now is not inspiration but intention: coordinated, sustained, institutionally supported commitment to telling stories differently.The dual edge of cultural framingIslamic teaching is unambiguous about the sanctity of human life, and it offers genuine resources for endurance and frameworks for sense-making in instances of hardship that, when engaged with care and genuine compassion, can function as powerful protective forces. The concept of sabr, of patient perseverance through trial as an act of faith, is for many people a lifeline.When religious framing of mental suffering slides toward moral judgment, when distress becomes evidence of insufficient faith rather than a medical and psychological reality deserving of care, it builds barriers precisely where bridges are needed. A young person who fears spiritual condemnation alongside their pain is less likely to speak, less likely to ask for help, and more likely to suffer in isolation until the situation becomes critical.The invitation here is to insist that compassion is itself a religious obligation. That the person in distress is precisely the person the community, guided by its deepest values, is called to surround with care. Religious leaders who speak about mental health with openness and humanity are enacting one of its most essential commands.When trusted figures such as imams, elders, and local leaders model compassionate language, acknowledge emotional suffering as real and treatable, and actively encourage help-seeking, they do something no campaign can do alone. They change what is normal. They signal, to everyone within earshot, that vulnerability is not shameful, and that asking for help is an act of faith.Protection is a system, not a gestureIt would be convenient if suicide prevention was something that could be reduced to a single intervention. It is not. It is the cumulative, coordinated work of multiple systems, each essential, each strengthened by the functioning of the others:Communication: Media professionals, content creators, and influencers must understand the dynamics of contagion such as how narratives can inadvertently increase risk, and how they can be reframed to promote safety and hope. Every public narrative touching on suicide should include a clear, accessible pathway to support.Education: Schools are where young people spend most of their waking lives. Embedding social-emotional learning, trained counsellors, and clear referral pathways into everyday school culture transforms educational institutions from passive settings into active protective environments.Community: The difference between escalation and safety often comes down to a single conversation. Equipping families, peers, and community leaders with skills in active listening, psychological first aid, and nonjudgmental responses transform everyday relationships into the first line of care.Health systems: Encouraging help-seeking is empty without accessible help to seek. Quality mental health services integrated across the full continuum of care, including tele-mental health for outer atolls, must be the foundation on which everything else rests. Systems must ensure timely response, continuity of care, and follow-up.None of these systems operates in isolation. A school counsellor who identifies a student in distress must be able to refer to a functioning health system. A community member who wants to help must know what resources exist. A media professional practicing safe messaging must feel supported by a broader professional culture that values responsible communication. This protective power doesn’t lie in just one system, but in the connections between them, which must be deliberately built and maintained. Young people as the solutions of the futureThere is a tendency in public health frameworks to position young people as targets of intervention. As populations to be protected, educated, or reached. This framing, however well-intentioned, contains a subtle condescension that often undermines the goals it is meant to serve. It treats the people most affected by a problem as passive recipients of solutions they had no hand in shaping.Young people in Maldives are already shaping the narratives their peers absorb. They are the most active users of platforms where contagion can spread and where protection can be built. Their voices, their language, and their stories carry weight in peer networks that no institutional messaging campaign can fully penetrate. When a young person shares their own experience of struggling and seeking help, it reaches places that a government poster does not. Creating spaces where young people can contribute, connect, and lead helps shift narratives from silence and stigma to openness and support. Their participation must be guided, safe, and rooted in connection rather than spectacle.A collective callThe evidence is unambiguous: stories influence behavior. Narratives can narrow what feels possible, or they can expand it. We do not control all the forces that shape a person's vulnerability but we do control what stories we put into the world. We can control whether we include a helpline number or not or whether we frame distress as a permanent state or a navigable one.Reframing how we talk about suicide is not about avoiding difficulty. It is about choosing, with full awareness of the stakes, how we enter difficult conversations, what we emphasize, what we leave out, what possibilities we open or foreclose for the person who is listening from a place of pain.The same social forces capable of amplifying a harmful story can amplify a protective one. The same intimacy of island life that accelerates contagion can accelerate hope. The same speed with which grief travels can carry something else: the message that help exists, that support is close, and that the night, however long, will pass.If you are struggling, please reach out. Help is available. You do not have to carry this alone.1677National Mental Health HelplineThis article is first published at UNICEF Maldives website on From contagion to protection: Reframing the Werther effect in Maldives | UNICEF MaldivesTo learn more about the works of UNICEF Maldives Please go to UNICEF Maldives

The Ministry of Health, Family and Welfare, with technical support from World Health Organization (WHO) and support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of Japan, has officially launched the Maldives Digital Health Blueprint 2026–2030, marking a significant milestone in the country's digital transformation journey and its commitment to strengthening a resilient, people-centered health system.The Blueprint provides a comprehensive national roadmap for digital health over the next five years, bringing together existing digital health initiatives under a unified strategic framework. It builds on the Maldives' investments in digital platforms such as the Maldives Health Information System (MIHIS), eFaas and Aasandha, while aligning with WHO's seven building blocks for digital health, including governance, standards, workforce, infrastructure and data protection.Speaking at the launch, WHO Representative to Maldives, Ms Payden, congratulated the Ministry of Health, Family and Welfare on the achievement and acknowledged the collaborative efforts that made the Blueprint possible."For the Maldives, digital health is not a convenience; it is a matter of equity. It offers the most practical, sustainable and resilient way to deliver quality care to every citizen, on every island, regardless of distance or weather."The Blueprint is the result of months of collaboration led by the Ministry's Health Information Management and Research Division and Information Technology Division, with technical contributions from WHO country and regional offices, international experts from Singapore, Sri Lanka and Australia, and strong support from the Asian Development Bank and the Government of Japan.The strategy also supports the Government's broader Maldives 2.0 vision by advancing sectoral digital transformation and strengthening collaboration across government institutions responsible for technology, digital services and innovation. This whole-of-government approach aims to improve interoperability, strengthen health information systems and enhance the delivery of quality health services across the country.The successful implementation of the Digital Health Blueprint is expected to improve continuity of care, strengthen decision-making through better health data, reduce administrative burdens on health workers and ensure that people, regardless of where they live, have more timely access to quality health services. As highlighted during the launch, the true measure of success will be reflected in healthier communities, more efficient services and better health outcomes for all.WHO remains committed to supporting the Government of Maldives in implementing the Digital Health Blueprint and advancing the country's vision of Universal Health Coverage; a stronger, more equitable and digitally enabled health system for everyone, everywhere. This article is first published at WHO Maldives website on Maldives launches Digital Health Blueprint 2026–2030 to advance equitable, integrated health careTo learn more about the works of WHO Maldives Please visit WHO Maldives | World Health Organization