Special provision may enable undocumented children to attend national schools
KUALA LUMPUR: There is renewed hope for stateless children in Malaysia to get a proper education here.
Bait Al-Amanah research and advocacy analyst Simraatraj Kaur Dhillon said discussions with the Education Ministry to allow them to attend national schools under a special provision were ongoing.
The leader of the Didik Semua programme, a collaboration between Bait Al-Amanah and Wiki Impact, urged the government to provide such an opportunity to undocumented children so that they would not be left behind.
“By law, non-citizens are not eligible to attend public schools, even though access to education for all is one of the human rights.
“We suggested that the government consider issuing a special pass for stateless children to enable them to attend school,” she said, adding that Didik Semua was created with this aim in mind.
She said there were cases of stateless children waiting for years before their applica- tion for citizenship was approved.
By then, they would have lost most or all of their schooling years, she said.
“The first step in addressing the problem is to acknowledge it, before we can move forward and come up with solutions together. This proposal, which came about after a webinar on stateless children, is another step in that direction,” she said.
It was reported last month that Sarawak would issue temporary documentation to stateless children to allow them access to public schools and medical services offered at similar rates as citizens.
Non-governmental organisations such as Bait Al-Amanah had previously called for structural changes in ensuring welfare and education for the group, lamenting bureaucracy and the lack of public awareness that had seen a rise in the number of undocumented children.
The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) also called for the Home Ministry to execute the standard operation procedure, which was established on Jan 1, 2020, to expedite the citizenship application process.
Suhakam Commissioner Professor Datuk Noor Aziah Awal had previously highlighted that the absent link between undocumented individuals and the state due to the legal notion of nationality had worsened the issue of stateless children.
It had led to the growing number of citizenship applications under Article 15A of the Federal Constitution, with 31,494 applicantions recorded between 2015 and 2020, she said.
While Malaysia had ratified the Committee on the Rights of the Child, she said several reservations were made, including Article 2 (protection against discrimination), Article 7 (right to nationality) and Article 28 (right to education).