Citation

Ephranella Cooray, Manique Apsara (2019) Stateless Children in the East-Asian Region and the Judicial Response from Malaysia. In: 7 th AsianSIL Biennial Conference, 22-23 August 2019, Quezon City, Philippines.

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Abstract

According to available statistics especially from the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) indicates that in the year 2017, 40% of the identified stateless population of the world live in Asia and the Pacific. Many factors contribute to statelessness across the region, ranging from discriminatory laws, policies and practices, race and religion, among others. In the same year, in Asia and the Pacific, Malaysia was listed as one of the countries which have large populations of stateless persons. However, it has been acknowledged that Malaysia is one of the countries which have shown a significant improvement and reduction in the number of stateless persons in their territories, attributing to some of the initiatives implemented by UNHCR and local NGOs. The UNHCR has set goals on ending statelessness in 2024 through the implementation of Action 1 on Resolving Major Situations of Statelessness; Action 2 by ensuring that No Child is Born Stateless and Action 10 focusing on Improving Quantitative and Qualitative Date on Stateless Persons. This paper focuses on stateless children as one group among the stateless population in Malaysia. There are various circumstances on how a child can be stateless. They could have been abandoned at birth, some are adopted but unable to trace their birth parents, others were born to a foreign mother who did not register their marriage to their Malaysian spouse. The Welfare Society Malaysia estimated that in 2017 there are 290,000 children in Malaysia who are stateless and 60,000 of them are without a birth certificate. Nonetheless, obstacles in getting official recognition of the existence of stateless persons especially in East Malaysia remains a challenge. The most conventional is to challenge the National Registration’s refusal to acknowledge Malaysian born children as citizens is to seek judicial intervention. Recently, in October 2018, the Chief Justice of Malaysia, chaired a nine-man Bench whereby two out of five stateless children cases were resolved in Federal Court where the appeal was struck off as the Home Ministry approved registering the children as Malaysians. The objective of this paper therefore is to examine the judicial response in Malaysia towards resolving the issue of stateless children in the country

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Stateless children; Human Rights
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Law (FOL)
Depositing User:	Ms Rosnani Abd Wahab
Date Deposited:	29 Oct 2021 03:28
Last Modified:	29 Oct 2021 03:28
URII:	http://shdl.mmu.edu.my/id/eprint/9081

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