Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2019 1(1) Another NGO and a lawyer detailed a case where three generations of persons within one family are stateless: the grandmother, her daughter and her grandchild. 77 As the grandmother was born and had been living in Malaysia since pre-independence, she is entitled to citizenship. The problem was she did not have any paperwork attesting to this fact and therefore could not obtain citizenship herself, and therefore transfer citizenship to her children like other Malaysians. Still another case that illustrates the generational problem is one described by 1L, who detailed how a child was rendered stateless because the child’s birth had not been registered, despite the fact that both of his parents have Malaysian citizenship (from pre-independence). Despite repeated attempts to obtain citizenship for the child, he has been denied and the reason is unknown. 78 In all of these cases, the issue is not whether such persons are deserving of citizenship, since they have a constitutional right to citizenship and all have a genuine and effective link to Malaysia by virtue of their long-standing residence in Malaysia stemming from pre-independence times. B People Who Lack Documentation As other researchers have noted, ‘long-term exclusion and problems in acquiring birth certificates and other documents mean that many children are considered to be “at risk” of statelessness’. 79 In Malaysia, it appears that there are persons who are stateless simply because they do not have the appropriate documentation to help them obtain citizenship. Eleven of 60 cases documented in this study exhibited the primary issue of statelessness was a lack of documentation. In many of the cases, the documentation that was missing mainly involved birth certificates and marriage certificates. However, even where a person had a birth certificate, sometimes the information on the birth certificate was lacking, such as who the parents of a child were, thus prompting a search for other documentation such as a DNA test or other proof that the child was that of a particular parent. While it is true that lack of documentation may intersect with other causes of statelessness (as discussed below, such as laws that discriminate on the basis of gender, and the lack of marriage registration) it is important to point out that documentation alone can be a substantive barrier to acquiring citizenship. 6S is an 18-year-old girl. She and her 12-year-old brother are stateless. 6S told me that both of her parents are Malaysian citizens, married and have a total of six children. 6S and two of her siblings are stateless. Her father is deceased and her mother had lost all of her important documents many years ago between the time her third sibling and fourth sibling were born, which explains why her older siblings have citizenship. 6S told me that it was difficult to apply for citizenship because she did not have the required documents since her mother had lost them and was unable to obtain new copies. With the help of a paralegal, she has gathered other documents that she hopes will help her citizenship application such as her father’s death certificate which detailed his citizenship 77 78 79 Appendix Table 3, Interview with 6NGO; Appendix Table 3, Interview with 1L. Appendix Table 3, Interview with 1L. Allerton, ‘Contested Statelessness in Sabah’ (n 2) 257; see also Allerton, ‘Statelessness and the Lives of the Children of Migrants in Sabah’ (n 60); Razali, Nordin and Duraisingam (n 5). 110