COMMENTARY REACHING STATELESS, UNDOCUMENTED AND MIGRANT COMMUNITIES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: LESSONS FROM THE GRASSROOTS HUMANITARIAN EFFORT IN SABAH, MALAYSIA MARY ANNE K BALTAZAR * AND AMANDA R CHEONG ** TABLE OF CONTENTS I II III Introduction........................................................................................................... 131 A Community-Based Social Listening Approach................................................. 133 A Tailored and Targeted Public Health Messaging...................................... 133 B Community-Based Social Listening Tools ............................................... 136 C The Impacts of COVID-19 on Stateless and Legally Marginalised Communities in Sabah .............................................................................. 137 D Loss of Livelihoods .................................................................................. 138 E Family Separation ..................................................................................... 139 F The Obstructive Impacts of Anti-Immigrant Crackdowns on the Public Health Effort ............................................................................................. 140 Conclusion and Recommendations ....................................................................... 141 A Treat Stateless People as Humans, Not Security Risks ............................ 141 B Listen, Learn and Adapt ........................................................................... 141 C Recognise That Health is a Human Right, Regardless of One’s Legal Status .................................................................................................................. 141 I INTRODUCTION In May 2020, the United Nations Refugee Agency issued a statement emphasising the particular vulnerabilities faced by stateless populations during the global COVID-19 crisis. In stating that ‘nobody can be protected unless everybody is * ** Mary Anne K Baltazar is an MA student in International Relations at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah and Fellow in the UMS-UNICEF Communications for Development Research Unit. She has 12 years of experience in human rights and non-profit work, specialising in statelessness, migration and children’s rights. Mary Anne is the founder of ANAK, an NGO that advocates for the rights of non-citizen children in Sabah, East Malaysia. Amanda R Cheong is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research explores the links between legal status and the reproduction of inequality, with a focus on stateless, undocumented and refugee populations. Amanda is currently writing a book, entitled Omitted Lives, which is an ethnography of the causes and consequences of exclusion from civil registration systems in Malaysia. For their generous financial and technical support, we thank Alexander Douglas and Maude Morrison from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. We also thank the International Development Research Center and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population’s CRVS Fellowship, which provided us with the resources to collaborate on this information dissemination initiative. Finally, we thank Sumitha Shaanthinni Kishna, Director of Our Journey, for providing food aid support for our communities, and to the indomitable Dr Kathryn Rivai of Etania Schools who was instrumental in facilitating our emergency aid provision effort.