LK4C wants SOP made to resolve stateless children issue

KUCHING: Lawyer Kamek for Change ( LK4C) is urging the Pakatan Harapan ( PH) government to immediately look into creating standard operating procedures ( SOPs) for stateless children to apply for Malaysian citizenship.

LK4C’s Simon Siah said this following Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s statement that the federal government would look into cases of children denied citizenship because their parents did not have proper marriage documents as reported in the Malay Mail online.

Sarawak in the past two years, Siah said, had formed task force in effort to resolve citizenship matter, especially those involving children.

“Although the task force was set up to register stateless children ( below 21 years old under Article 15A of the Federal Constitution) and fairly recently, the initiative under Article 19 of the Federal Constitution (for those above 21 years old), statelessness is still a big problem,” he said in a press statement received here yesterday.

“However, the result was not encouraging as only those applicants who have gone through the task force within a certain period of time were given citizenship.”

Siah shared that out of 4,098 applications only 2,885 were approved while the rest were rejected.

“Although we have no benefits of knowing the reason for the rejections, it begs the question as to what happen to those children who are without citizenship but still continue to live in Malaysia?”.

The problem with statelessness, especially stateless children, he said, was manifold including their almost anonymous existence with no record which put them at risk of exploitation by criminals and becoming easy targets to be used as mules to commit crime.

“Stateless children are just like shadow that the previous government refused to acknowledge, but it is still a shadow that will continue to haunt us if it is not resolved.

“Moreover, stateless mothers will give birth to stateless children as provided under the Federal Constitution. The mothers will be stateless, the children will be stateless, even the grandchildren and the great grandchildren will all be stateless,” he added.

Siah said if such situation is not rectified, Malaysia would be flooded with stateless persons in the years to come.

“As Malaysia is a signatory to The Convention of The Rights of the Child, we propose that the Pakatan Harapan government remove their reservation over Article 7 of the Convention of Rights for Children (CRC) and fully rectify Article 7 into our law so that all children born in Malaysia are registered immediately after birth with their nationality Malaysians,” he said.

With the rectification of Article 7 of the CRC into the Federal Constitution and Malaysian Law, Siah said there would be no need for the task force anymore as the National Registration Dpartment is empowered to give citizenship for children born in Malaysia.

“Whatever procedures that are required for the stateless children to adhere to, such procedures must be given a time frame and the reason for objections must be informed to the applicants. It is morally wrong and inhumane to leave a child hanging without an identity,” he added.