Legal Empowerment

Legal empowerment comprises an integral component of DHRRA’s work, and is integrated into our overall community development initiatives targeted at empowering and building resilient grassroots communities. DHRRA’s work on legal empowerment can be traced back to our early stage of formation in 2003, through the establishment of Community Centres throughout Peninsular Malaysia to empower rural women and youth.

Legal Advice and Assistance

The communities we work with face varied form of legal issues, including such as non-payment of debt, marital legal issues, and employment issues among others. However they are often do not have the avenue to seek justice for these issues. To address this gap in access to justice, we provide legal advice and assistance to our communities through DHRRA’s Call Centre, which comprise an integral part of our ongoing legal empowerment initiative. Callers are provided with free legal advice and guidance on varied legal issues in major local languages. We work closely with our team of dedicated team of pro-bono lawyers to ensure the communities receive the needed legal support.

Legal Empowerment of Stateless and Undocumented Individuals

Legal empowerment became a crucial tool to deliver the much needed legal assistance to the stateless and undocumented population to acquire nationality and to empower the community by educating them about Malaysia’s citizenship law, citizenship and birth registration application procedures. While, our paralegals played a crucial role in bridging access to justice for the affected community, more complex cases (such as those requiring resolution by the court) were referred to our team of dedicated probono lawyers.

Strategic Litigation

The current framework for acquisition of citizenship contained in Malaysian’s Constitution can resolve statelessness through legal remedy at the courts for cases that cannot be resolved at NRD level. Litigation presents a dual opportunity to draw awareness to statelessness and to build jurisprudence on statelessness references to the existing provisions in the Federal Constitution. Our team of pro-bono lawyers are involved in litigation to enforce constitutional provisions relating to nationality and statelessness, and provide pro bono legal assistance for stateless applicants who cannot acquire nationality documentation through the existing NRD procedures.  We firmly believe, legal action with the aim to set legal precedent and reform policy is crucial to reduce and eventually eradicate statelessness.