2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) Malaysia as of 2017, and many are stateless. 120 In one case, 2L represented a Rohingya child that was born in Malaysia to obtain travel documents but was unsuccessful because she was stateless. The child has serious medical issues and a German NGO wanted to bring the child to Germany but was unable to because the child was stateless and could not acquire refugee status at the very least through UNHCR. 2L indicated that the German NGO gave up on transporting the child and has assisted the child in Malaysia. 121 9NGO works primarily with refugees in Malaysia and identified that, other than Rohingya, the main groups of stateless refugees include: Palestinian, Syrian and Thai. 9NGO revealed that many refugees are not preoccupied with obtaining citizenship in Malaysia but are more concerned about obtaining refugee status, and access to basic services such as health care and education since refugee status is not always given by UNHCR. 11NGO, also an organisation that works with refugees, substantiated this by saying that some refugees see Malaysia as a pit stop to other locations, and some would like to stay but recognise they must earn their right to citizenship and are more preoccupied with daily survival like obtaining a job and education for their children. 11NGO stated that many refugees don’t understand the concept of statelessness and don’t realise they are stateless. Further he surmised the majority didn’t care about statelessness but cared more about obtaining work, education and access to health care. 9NGO revealed that very few refugees obtain permanent residency or citizenship and those that do, do it through marriage. In other words, they obtain it by proving a genuine and effective link by marrying Malaysian citizen. 122 In some of these cases, long-standing residency in Malaysia may allow migrants and refugees to eventually qualify for citizenship but it is not an automatic conferral. Migrants and refugees must apply through the naturalisation process (which poses requirements on applicants) or apply through registration (if they meet those requirements, such as marrying a Malaysian citizen, speaking Malaysian sufficiently and residing in Malaysia for a period of time). 123 Persons in this category then are not de facto Malaysian citizens and may be citizens of other countries. If there are migrants and refugees in Malaysia that are stateless then they are genuinely stateless and the issue of resolving their nationality may reside in mining their migratory history to understand whether or not they have citizenship elsewhere. Their status as stateless on its own does not give them any automatic entitlement to citizenship in Malaysia and the reason resides in the fact that they do not possess any genuine or effective link as recognised in the Federal Constitution. They may attempt to obtain Malaysian citizenship through the naturalisation or registration processes by meeting the stated requirements that are the legal manifestations of a genuine and effective link. However, these processes do not provide a guarantee to obtaining citizenship and it is often extremely difficult for refugees or other migrants to meet requirements of the naturalisation process. Malaysia is not a signatory to Refugee Convention and the decision as to whether to recognise a group of persons as refugees is highly political. It is 120 Adam Bemma, ‘Malaysia: A Rohingya Safe Haven?’ Aljazeera (Kuala Lumpur, 23 November 2017) <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/malaysia-rohingya-safe-haven171122190637814.html>. 121 Appendix Table 3, Interview with 2L. 122 Appendix Table 3, Interview with 9NGO. 123 Federal Constitution (Malaysia) art 19. 120