STATELESSNESS IN MALAYSIA 1. INTRODUCTION Citizenship is a fundamental human right guaranteed by Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, not everyone born in the world is accorded the right. It is estimated that every 10 minutes a stateless child is born somewhere in the world1. In addition to being forced to carry the tag of a “non-citizen” and the struggles attached to it, often the onus is placed on the children and their families to prove that they possess all the required qualifications to be to be granted the citizenship of a country. Until then, the only recognition they will be entitled to is that of a stateless person, and the only life they are entitled to is a life deprived of all the fundamental rights associated with citizenship including the rights to education, healthcare, employment and mobility. In recent years, statelessness has emerged as a growing concern throughout the world, perpetuated by increased cross-border migration and massive refugee influx. Malaysia is no exception. Being one of the most developed countries in the ASEAN region, Malaysia has been witnessing a growing number of the stateless population over the years. This increase is often attributed to the transmigration or movement of people facilitated by Malaysia’s porous border with its neighbouring countries. However, the magnitude of statelessness in Malaysia, could not be explained by this reason alone, as doing so will exclude a significant number of people who have been rendered stateless despite never crossing international border, and thousands more who are at risk of statelessness despite being born in the country that has witnessed the birth of their parent, and in some cases, even the birth of their grandparents. The fact that Malaysia has not acceded to international accords pertaining to stateless persons i.e. the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the 1954 Convention Relating to Status of Stateless Person as well as other international treaties that safe guards vulnerable groups such as the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, places other vulnerable populations such as refugees and asylum seekers at high risk of statelessness, and further expands the extent of the statelessness in Malaysia. DHRRA Malaysia2 (DHRRA) is the pioneer in bringing to surface the plight of in-situ stateless persons in Malaysia. For more than a decade, the organisation has been striving to resolve statelessness in the country using evidence based approach. DHRRA’s involvement in the statelessness issue was not planned. It was born out of years of grassroots community development initiatives targeted at addressing the needs of vulnerable communities’ particularly rural Indian-Tamil community in Malaysia. Statelessness emerged as one of the main concerns of the community, with a large number of individuals and families living in compromised conditions due to lack of legal identification documents. Many led their life as stateless persons, deprived of all fundamental human rights, despite possessing all the eligibility to claim Malaysian citizenship. This prompted DHRRA to intervene by facilitating the acquisition of birth certificate for the rural Indian-Tamil Community, and thus began the organization’s journey towards resolving statelessness in Malaysia. 1 IBELONG. (2019). The Urgent Need to End Childhood Statelessness - IBELONG. [online] Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/the-urgent-need-to-end-childhood-statelessness/ [Accessed 4 Nov. 2019]. 2 Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas (DHRRA) Malaysia is a non-governmental organization working towards the social protection of Malaysian community. It has been addressing stateless issues in Malaysia since 2003. Efforts which were initially limited to provision of ad-hoc direct services in facilitating birth registration among the Malaysian Indian community are expanded over the years to include other ethnic groups in Malaysia. More emphasis is placed policy advocacy efforts in addressing the root causes of statelessness. DHRRA Malaysia Page 3 of 29