2019
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
1(1)
Malaysia. This study encourages further and deeper research on mapping out
who is stateless in Malaysia and the lived experiences of those persons.
RELEVANT MALAYSIAN CITIZENSHIP LAW
In order to understand how statelessness is created, one must briefly examine the
relevant aspects of Malaysia’s citizenship law. This paper does not aim to
present a comprehensive overview of how one obtains citizenship as other
scholars have done this work. 43 It is also important to understand that while the
below discusses citizenship law within the framework of the Federal
Constitution of Malaysia (‘Federal Constitution’), other pieces of legislation are
important to understand, including the 1952 Adoption Act 44 and the 1961
Legitimacy Act. 45 Examining the full scope of these pieces of legislation is
beyond the scope of this paper. As well, as indicated above, this article is a piece
of a wider research project examining the legal barriers to citizenship. The
mapping of, and examination of, the legal barriers to citizenship is provided in
other writing. 46
There are essentially four different ways a person can acquire citizenship in
Malaysia: by operation of law or automatically; 47 by registration; 48 by
naturalisation; 49 or by incorporation of territory. 50 Citizenship by operation of
law (automatic) is enunciated in art 14 of the Federal Constitution, as such:
(1) Subject to the provisions of this Part, the following persons are citizens by
operation of law, that is to say:
(a) every person born before Malaysia Day who is a citizen of the Federation
by virtue of the provisions contained in Part I of the Second Schedule;
and
(b) every person born on or after Malaysia Day, and having any of the
qualifications specified in Part II of the Second Schedule.
This provision should be read with pt II of sch II, s 1:
(a) Subject to the provisions of Part III of this Constitution, the following persons
born on or after Malaysia Day are citizens by operation of law, that is to say:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
See, eg, Allerton, ‘Contested Statelessness in Sabah’ (n 2); Acting for Tomorrow’s
Generation, Today (n 2). This paper also does not provide an overview of the rules of state
succession, which may provide an explanation of how some people may not have acquired
citizenship when Malaysia became independent. As I allude to above, even if state
succession rules did confer citizenship, some simply did not obtain citizenship due to
administrative and other legal barriers, which are discussed in other writing from this
research project.
Adoption Act 1952 (Malaysia).
Legitimacy Act 1961 (Malaysia, 1971 rev ed).
See, eg, Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas Malaysia, ‘Awareness
Handbook: Understanding Statelessness in Malaysia’ (Handbook, 31 January 2019)
<http://dhrramalaysia.org.my/handbooks-on-statelessness-by-dhrra-malaysia/>;
Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas Malaysia, ‘Mapping & Registration
Project Fact Sheet’ (Fact Sheet, August 2014) <http://dhrramalaysia.org.my/wpcontent/uploads/2014/09/Fact-Sheet-on-Mapping-and-Registration-August-2014-DHRRAMalaysia.pdf>.
Federal Constitution (Malaysia) art 14.
ibid arts 15–18.
ibid art 19.
ibid art 22.
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