Thread by @twt_malaysia

Hellloo everyone... how's your day so far!!!

Do you guys know what STATELESSNESS is???

Let's have a discussion tonight on Statelessness topic.. shall we??

What is STATELESSNESS??

In International law, a stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law"

Have you ever met anyone who is stateless before??
eg : someone who doesn't have any identification and cant have any.

There's a couple of definition that I would like to highlight.

REFUGEES

A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.

INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSON (IDPs)

An internally displaced person is someone who is forced to flee his or her home but who remains within his or her country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.

Some stateless persons are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many persons who are stateless have never crossed an international border

Do you think there's people within our country, who them, their parents, and even grandparents were born here but they are stateless?? Despite being here for generations they are not considered as Malaysians.

If statelessness is a condition where you are not a citizen of any country, then how do you acquire a citizenship?

CITIZENSHIP LAW for each country differs from one to another. Broadly speaking, there's 2 types :

1. Jus Soli
2. Jus Sanguinis

Some countries practiced both.

Jus soli - By land, in which a child who were born within a country's territorial jurisdiction acquires the country nationality. Eg : United State of America.

Jus Sanguinis - By decent, the principle by which a child acquires the nationality of his or her parents. Eg: Haiti

What do we practice here in Malaysia?

A child born in the country is entitled to Malaysian nationality THROUGH HIS OR HER PARENTS. If either his / her parents is a Malaysia national or Permenant resident, the child is a national.

By law, you are a Malaysian if your parents are

Do we have stateless people in Malaysia??

Sadly, the answer is YES , WE DO!!

WHO AND WHERE??

West Malaysia - Around 13k known cases among tamil indians.
East Malaysia - 800k known cases of undocumented people in Sabah

Nationality or citizenship allows us to enjoy the rights, benefits and protection guaranteed to its nationals.

Eg of the benefits and rights :

1. Education
2. Healthcare
3. Employment
4. Protection from crimes
5. Saving
6. Housing

Let's take a look at our lives, we are allowed to go to school for free, finish our exams, have a chance to received tertiary education, allow to get a job,can vote, free gov healthcare & if someone hurt us, the law will protect us. Sadly, a stateless person cant have all these.

A stateless person were denied access to education, healthcare, protection and many other rights, that we took for granted. We chant the words humanity, human rights, but we deny other humans' rights just because they lack of certification as if they weren't human.

How did Tamil Indians in West Malaysia became stateless?

During the early days when we start the process of registrations of nationality in Malaysia, unfortunately some of the communities of Tamil Indian were left behind in the process, mostly due to limited acess to informtion

Back then, not having a documentation is not really a big issue, where you can still go to school and get a job. Unfortunately, that's not the case today and since they weren't registered back then, they have no documentation today that can help them to acquire nationality.

This is saddening as many of their children cant go to school, and when they are sick, they cant go to hospital to seek medical help!! They live in poverty as the adult cant get a job.

For more information on the stateless community of Tamil Indians in Malaysia, you can check out this NGO (our unsung hero) who has been fighting to help the world to be a better place!

Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas (DHRRA Malaysia)

dhrramalaysia.org.my

Sabah stateless cases is slightly different than the one in East Malaysia. As it's either :

1. Nomadic ethnic - Bajau laut
2. Marginalized communities
3. Child of legal/illegal immigrants that were born here,& were left when their parents were captured by the authorities.

IMPORTANT

Other cases that caused the child to be born stateless :

1. Born from non recognized married (where they get married overseas and the marriage was not registered here) parents

2. Born out of wedlock (anak luar nikah)

3. One of the parents is stateless

4. A child who was adopted via court (many uses this method as it's faster than going through the Welfare department). Unfortunately, the court can only approved the adoption but can't grant a citizenship.

STORIES

I've met some stateless children from West Malaysia before. They told me how they struggled to go to school, they need to pay high fee to enter Public School!! Sometimes even thousands of ringgit. They were denied access by TEACHERS to enter the class.

They were mock by the teachers and students on their status. When asked what do they wanted the most, they wanted A CITIZENSHIP, to have access to education, so that they can work and fill their empty stomach.

A few months back, I went to Tawau, Sabah where I visited a stateless community there. A village full of stateless community (around 3k) living in a slum area, where houses made by woods, with no acccess to water and electricity, and can burn to ashes with a spark of fire.

The reason why there's no clear solution in Malaysia to end statelessness is because we do not recognized it. Why? Because Malaysia was not part of the 1954 and 1961 convention of statelessness.

1954 convention was to ensure that stateless person to enjoy a minimum set of human rights. These include, but are not limited to, the right to education, employment and housing. It also guarantees stateless people a right to identity, travel documents & administrative assistance

1961 convention aims to reduce statelessness and end it over time!! It requires that states establish safeguards in their nationality laws to prevent statelessness at birth and later in life.

When a country doesn't rectify a convention, then they are not legally bind to obey it. Malaysia doesn't recognize statelessness as part of the problem, thus, technically how can they solve a problem that doesn't exist right??

Yes, education and health care is a basic human rights. Unfortunately, since the stateless community is not recognized as citizen, by law, they cant be granted by those rights. The Law calls it protection of the nation, I call it the opression of human!

This issue is a big issue concerning various parties especially as it involves governments and the national security.

In Sabah, the issue is harder to be fought as it's hard to know whether one is stateless because they were born as one or because they were illegal immigrants who sneak into this country and wanted to be changed the nationality easily.

For goverment school, one need to have a valid identification (either ic or passport or birth cert) to register especially if they wanted to sit for national exam. Although they are various organisations who started various schools for stateless children.

This problems first required our goverment to acknowledge the problem and which then proceed with the ammendment of law or policies.

In 2014, UNHCR launched the #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024. You can check it out here :

unhcr.org/ibelong/

STORIES