Homegrown Statelessness in Malaysia and her older siblings’ identification which details their citizenship. She has applied for citizenship but is waiting for a response. 80 14S is a 32-year-old woman whose birth certificate indicates that her citizenship is ‘belum ditentukan’ or not specified. 14S’s birth certificate does not have any details regarding her father and is missing the citizenship information of her mother. Since her parents were not married, 14S’s citizenship follows her mother but since her mother could not substantiate her citizenship at the time of her birth registration, 14S does not have Malaysian citizenship. 14S subsequently married a Malaysian citizen and had three children with him. Two of those children are not citizens because her marriage was not registered before the births of the two older children. The third child was born after 14S’s marriage was registered and therefore her youngest child inherited his father’s Malaysian citizenship. 14S has been able to find her mother’s birth certificate, which identifies her mother as a citizen. She applied for citizenship in 2011 with this new document but was rejected. She and her two older children remain stateless. 81 15S is a 63-year-old woman of Indian Tamil descent who holds a permanent residence card even though her mother (aged 86) is a Malaysian citizen and her three siblings have Malaysian citizenship. 15S does not know why she does not have Malaysian citizenship. Her mother, ten years ago, lost her birth certificate, and has made efforts by attending three separate registration offices to get a new one but has not been able to. 82 In these cases, again, the question is not one of entitlement — persons in this category have a legal entitlement and also genuine and effective links to Malaysia but lack the documentation to substantiate these links. A more proactive role on the part of the government to assist in providing documentation and also infusing flexibility in decision-making would assist this group of persons. This aspect of this research project will be explored in greater detail in forthcoming work. C Abandoned Children or ‘Foundlings’ and Adopted Children An overriding theme arising out of my discussions with interview participants was how statelessness is prevalent among abandoned and adopted children. Fifteen of the 60 cases identified for this study dealt with abandoned and/or 80 81 82 Appendix Table 2, Interview with 6S. Appendix Table 2, Interview with 14S. Appendix Table 2, Interview with 15S. 111