THE STATELESS NEED A REMEDY
MALAYSIA’S participation in the Universal Periodical Review was indubitably one of the multiple platforms available for Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy (CENTHRA) to address the issues raised by the United Nations in the realm of human rights. One of the main areas of concern is statelessness.
Beyond the right to citizenship, being refused a full education, and other matters related to statelessness, Centhra and Council of Sabah Islamic NGOs (CONCERN), together with support from Majlis Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan (MAIWP) and Yayasan Dakwah Islamiah Malaysia (YADIM), organised a policy dialogue last December that saw the formation of Jawatankuasa Pasukan Petugas Khas NGO Orang Tanpa Kewarganegaraan (JPPK-OTK).
This committee hopes to address the consequences of legal Islamic marriages that does not produce a marriage certificate due to statelessness itself.
Coming from these fruitful discussions, CENTHRA intends to affect change through its newly developed series of programmes that will be managed through our Community Leadership Empowerment Initiative (CLEAN), a living unit that adapts to support societal needs.
On our recent visit to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, we held a roundtable discussion with our partners to deliberate on the stateless. Our visits to education centres for the stateless were an eye-opener even though we have worked with them and have previously presented their issues at international fora.
There are thousands of people in Malaysia who are stateless. Stateless persons are not like refugees who flee from their birth country due to persecution and violations on their right to exist.
Stateless people are those who, for various reasons, remain in their situation, where some have no regard to its implications due to sheer ignorance. At least, that’s one part of it.
The word “ignorance” does not mean lack of intelligence, but that of exposure and understanding that leads to the deprivation of their natural rights. This refers to the rights one who was born to a Malaysian citizen, where in some cases even on our soil, and who should inherit all the entitlements as well as protection that right gets them, but do not.
The conditions of a person who falls into the situation of “statelessness” range from the unbelievable, to laughable, and even senseless.
Consider this scenario. A Malaysian woman, whose family consisted of a foreign husband whom she married through legal means, complete with the certification from Malaysia’s own Islamic authority body, and the three children they have who are, naturally, Malaysian citizens.
Her family then travelled overseas to reconnect with his family members, whom he hasn’t seen since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, while he was a student here. Being pregnant with their fourth child at the time of their travel, the couple ended up having their fourth child while still overseas.
She then made arrangements to procure a Malaysian passport for her newborn — only to be told that the child is not eligible because he was not born in Malaysia. This means a mother could not extend her nationality to her child born abroad.
Having returned to Malaysia on an “Emergency Certificate”, the problem is far from being over. This family found themselves with one member who is, in a sense, isolated without rights to the country his family belong to. And he’s only 2.
We can debate about the stateless deserving rights but it does not dismiss the fact that the inadequacy of our policies deny individuals their basic rights.
We need a structure and clear guidelines that can give it the credibility it needs to have for adopting the stateless into our fold. The immediate concern that needs to be addressed is to uphold the rights of stateless children.
The implications of denying them their rights is a sad reflection of our inability to protect, to serve justly, to uphold the religious as well as social rights of people who are, in essence, Malaysians. Generations could be set back from the lack of education.
We hope to bring awareness and shed light to the situations that are related to statelessness until a solution is found. The time to act is now.