2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) making it more likely that they may be rendered de facto stateless. 41 There may thus be an onus upon parents, for instance, to register the birth of their child at a government office/embassy within a specific period from the date of birth before a state will recognise the child as a citizen. A mere entitlement is therefore nugatory if, having failed to act upon it, a person does not acquire that citizenship (or cannot prove that they have acquired it). The irony here is that the Constitution itself contains such provisions and the courts regularly engage with this type of analysis when dealing with other citizenship cases. Consider, for instance, sch II pt II s 1(c), which provides for conferral of citizenship by operation of law upon persons born outside the Federation to a Malaysian father ‘and whose birth is, within one year of its occurrence … registered at a consulate of the Federation’. On the facts of the case, L had been born in and lived in Malaysia all his life under the care of his paternal grandmother. 42 Beyond his maternal link, he had no ties or connections to Thailand or its polity. There was no suggestion that his birth had been registered with the Thai authorities, nor had any evidence been tendered to the effect that he was a recognised Thai citizen. For all intents and purposes, the Thai government did not even know of L’s existence. Nor, it bears repeating, was an expert witness on Thai citizenship law called to give evidence at trial. The finding that L was a Thai citizen thus appears to be a wholly unsubstantiated assertion. Than and Lim may be contrasted with the approach in Madhuvita v Augustin (‘Madhuvita’). 43 The appellant, M, was born out of wedlock at a local hospital to her Malaysian father and her mother, who held a passport issued by Papua New Guinea. Following her birth, her parents married. Unbeknownst to them, M’s birth had not been registered; they subsequently sought and acquired a birth certificate some six years after her birth. The certificate stated that she was not a Malaysian citizen. M applied for citizenship under art 15A and was rejected. She then brought a judicial review claim seeking an order to compel the Government to register her as a citizen, on the basis that citizenship had been conferred upon her by operation of law under art 14(1)(b), read together with either sch II pt II ss 1(a) and/or 1(e), of the Constitution. The High Court dismissed her application, but the Court of Appeal overturned this decision and allowed the appeal. The Court found for M on the s 1(a) grounds, which alone would have sufficed to dispose of the appeal. They nevertheless went on to consider submissions on the s 1(e) grounds. The respondent Government had sought to argue, along the lines adopted in Lim, that M was a citizen of Papua New Guinea by reference to the country’s citizenship provisions, and therefore could not satisfy the jus sanguinis requirement of s 1(e). In an incisive judgment, the Court flatly noted that these submissions were premised purely upon counsel’s own opinion and interpretation of those provisions, and that they were neither supplemented by caselaw or academic opinion from that jurisdiction. Nor had the respondent sought to confirm the status of M as a citizen with the Papua New Guinean authorities. 44 A perusal of the provisions also indicated that registration of M’s birth was necessary for her to acquire Papua New Guinean citizenship; it was undisputed that this had never 41 42 43 44 ibid. Lim (n 35) [5]. [2018] 1 MLJ 307 (‘Madhuvita’). ibid [72]. 318