PLOS ONE Undocumented: An examination of legal identity and education provision for children in Malaysia children born outside of a legitimate marriage. Also, Malaysia is one of the twenty-five countries to deny women the right to pass their citizenship to their children on an equal basis with men [94]. The Federal constitution does not allow automatic citizenship for children born abroad to Malaysian women married to foreign spouses, despite Malaysian men being able to do so. While Malaysian parents can apply for citizenship for their children, decisions may take years and rejections are common. Gender discriminatory citizenship laws place children at risk of statelessness if they are unable to obtain citizenship from the other parent [95,96]. Nevertheless, children with citizenship claims have more options compared to other undocumented children. The ‘Zero Reject Policy’ was launched to ease public school entry for undocumented children of Malaysian parentage, giving parents two years to produce Malaysian identity documents for their children [73]. Unfortunately, uniform implementation of this policy has not been ensured on a national basis [97,98], with some schools refusing admittance of stateless children without documents to prove Malaysian citizenship. Children born in Malaysia to non-citizen parents or those with undetermined parentage receive few entitlements [99,100]. The future is particularly bleak for undocumented and stateless children without identity documents or pathways to citizenship, as they have little prospect for post-secondary education or formal employment. The policy environment may be influenced by the lack of public sympathy and political will towards improving the rights of undocumented children without Malaysian parentage. The sizable population of undocumented persons in Sabah, despite some being born and raised locally, garners little positive attention from locals as they are perceived as outsiders competing for limited jobs and are blamed for a range of social ills [52,101]. Also, the state government regularly shuts down community learning centres [102–104]. For the refugee communities in Peninsular Malaysia, the alternate education system appears to be more structured with partial oversight from the UNHCR. Several centres prepare children to take international school-leaving examinations towards future resettlement. However, since learning centres aren’t regulated by the government, there are inconsistencies in terms of syllabus, teachers, and facilities. Certain communities may be better able to navigate the alternate education system, while marginalised communities like the Rohingya have unequal access. Refugee children have even entered private universities on scholarships [105,106]. However, university enrolment is limited by administrative requirements of passports and student passes which many refugees have difficulty obtaining, recognition of prior learning and prohibitive costs [107,108]. Situating refugee education in its global context, global trends towards protracted situations affecting 15.9 million refugees or 78% of all refugees as of 2018 [109] forces us to rethink the suitability of short-term education responses that are neither certified nor monitored by the host countries. As such, the UNHCR Refugee Education 2030 strategy [110] envisions the inclusion of refugees and stateless children into the national education system as the best option for persons of concern and their hosting communities. The strategy discourages investment in informal education as substitutes for formal education without accredited learning while acknowledging the importance of collaboration with Ministers of Education and the financial and technical support required from the international community [110]. Providing education to all children from a young age is a positive move that would allow children to thrive and eventually contribute to the nation [111,112]. It is estimated that if education is provided to refugees at par with the Malaysian population, refugee contributions to the GDP would increase to over RM6.5 billion annually by 2040, with annual tax contributions of over RM250 million [113]. Successful examples of nations that integrate non-citizen children into their national education systems may be found among European Union member states and countries PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263404 February 2, 2022 19 / 26