Citizenship is a fundamental human right guaranteed by Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, not everyone born in the world is accorded the right. It is estimated that every 10 minutes a stateless child is born somewhere in the world. In addition to being forced to carry the tag of a “non-citizen” and the struggles attached to it, often the onus is placed on the children and their families to prove that they possess all the required qualifications to be to be granted the citizenship of a country. Until then, the only recognition they will be entitled to is that of a stateless person, and the only life they are entitled to is a life deprived of all the fundamental rights associated with citizenship including the rights to education, healthcare, employment and mobility.

In recent years, statelessness has emerged as a growing concern throughout the world, perpetuated by increased cross-border migration and massive refugee influx. Malaysia is no exception. Being one of the most developed countries in the ASEAN region, Malaysia has been witnessing a growing number of the stateless population over the years. This increase is often attributed to the transmigration or movement of people facilitated by Malaysia’s porous border with its neighbouring countries. However, the magnitude of statelessness in Malaysia, could not be explained by this reason alone, as doing so will exclude a significant number of people who have been rendered stateless despite never crossing international border, and thousands more who are at risk of statelessness despite being born in the country that has witnessed the birth of their parent, and in some cases, even the birth of their grandparents. 

DHRRA Malaysia (DHRRA) is the pioneer in bringing to surface the plight of in-situ stateless persons in Malaysia. For more than a decade, the organisation has been striving to resolve statelessness in the country using evidence based approach. DHRRA’s involvement in the statelessness issue was not planned. It was born out of years of grassroots community development initiatives targeted at addressing the needs of vulnerable communities’ particularly rural community in Malaysia. Statelessness emerged as one of the main concerns of the community, with a large number of individuals and families living in compromised conditions due to lack of legal identification documents. Many led their life as stateless persons, deprived of all fundamental human rights, despite possessing all the eligibility to claim Malaysian citizenship. This prompted DHRRA to intervene by facilitating the acquisition of birth certificate and other legal documents for the rural Indian Community whose issues were largely politized as the marginalised communities. 

DHRRA’s intervention exposed the circumstances and plights of thousands of stateless individuals who had remained hidden within the layers of the Malaysian society up to then. Given the gravity of the statelessness issues facing the rural Indian community and the challenges faced in assessing the scale of the issue given the absence of accurate baseline data on statelessness in Malaysia, DHRRA initiated a registration and paralegal aid services in 4 states (Selangor, Perak, Kedah, Negeri Sembilan) in West Malaysia in June 2014 with the technical support provided by UNHCR.

 The mapping exercise, which successfully identified over 13,000 stateless people, was a ground-breaking effort in overcoming the hurdle of quantifying statelessness in Malaysia. Though the initiative ended in 2015, DHRRA continues to assist stateless persons from diverse ethnicities in Malaysia to acquire nationality documentation through its community based paralegal aid services. Some of the initiatives were conducted with the government agencies involvement of National Registration Department (NRD) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) and The Prime Minister Office. 

Over the years, DHRRA has supported and assisted thousands of individuals to free from the cycle of statelessness entrapping them and their families. Due to DHRRA’s continuous advocacy efforts on the issue, statelessness is no longer a concealed issue in Malaysia. It has gained attention of various stakeholders, especially the Malaysian Government, which prompted them to take the necessary actions to tackle the issue.