e-Risalah USIM - Edisi Jun 2021

3. Which area of law governing statelessness in Malaysia that you wish to see changes on ? i. Immigration Law The definition of the term ‘prohibited immigrants’ in the Immigration Act 1959/63 that refers to people who are prohibited from entering the country ought to exclude refugees and stateless people. It is important to legally distinguish these people who seek protection from the larger cluster of the so-called ‘irregular’ migrants - to avoid them from being subjected to punishment, harassment, and other mistreatment from both the authorities and members of the public. Secondly, the policy and law concerning labour and immigration should allow for a temporary legal status with the right to legally work, at the minimum, to persons identified as stateless as well as refugees. It would certainly help in terms of the protection of such groups if the government could ratify the pertinent human rights conventions such as the 1951 Refugee Convention and the two 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions. ii. Birth Registration and Marriage Registration These two rights are interrelated and could magnify the risk of statelessness to children, especially those born within vulnerable and often marginalised groups of stateless, refugees, and undocumented. A birth certificate serves as proof of one’s existence in the eyes of the law. It is needed to demonstrate the vital information of birthplace and parentage, the two criteria to determine and assign one’s nationality. The international standards require that every birth should be recorded regardless of the immigration and status of one’s parents. To make this possible, every marriage must be registered and recorded by the civil authority. Informal religious marriages can be a barrier to universal birth registration. Furthermore, marriage registration provides protection from undesirable implications for children and women. To provide awareness on the significance of marriage registration among the vulnerable refugee groups, the Faculty of Syariah and Law in collaboration with a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) known as Refugee Support Group co-organised a workshop on marriage management of the refugees in 2018, which was officiated by the ex- OIC Special Envoy for Myanmar, Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar. Without a legally recognised marriage, children born within it are technically assigned the status of ‘illegitimate’, and women as wives could suffer a host of human rights abuses without being able to legally enforce their rights, including matrimonial and property rights. Family unity including for deported, repatriated and resettled migrants, stateless, and refugees, can certainly be at stake without formal proof of birth registration and family relationship. Malaysia is home to many refugees, the largest size of which is represented by asylum seekers and refugees from Myanmar. The latest exodus in 2017 drove some 700,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing the country to its neighbours, primarily Bangladesh, Malaysia, and India - amid allegations of genocide. At the moment, access to the basic rights and livelihood can be restricted if proof of one’s legal residence and stay cannot be submitted - a barrier commonly faced by undocumented asylum seekers and migrants in this country. iii. Reservations to Basic International Norms on Legal Identity The country is party to both CRC and CEDAW, the two human rights conventions for the protection of children and women. But it still places reservations on a number of key provisions that are needed to ensure every child has a legal identity and is not discriminated against. Malaysia has committed itself to achieving SDG 2030 and is also among the UN Member States that has recently accepted the UN Global Compacts on Refugees and on Migrants. In line with these global pledges calling for promotion of inclusion for development and for safe, regular and orderly migration, non-discrimination, and dignified return - the government should consider lifting its reservations to crucial provisions to protect against statelessness, such as Article 2 CRC on the right of every child not to be discriminated, Article 7 CRC on the rights of every child to be registered at birth and to acquire a nationality, and Article 9(2) CEDAW to ensure equality between men and women of their rights to pass on nationality to their children. 4. Could you share something about your work on statelessness that is different in Canada than it would be in Malaysia? In Canada, my focus was still on protection of children against statelessness, albeit with a heavier emphasis on its mitigation/ solution dimension through an integrated system of birth and legal identity status, including nationality. Countries in the Americas, including Canada and the United States are known for being countries with more open and lenient immigration and citizenship policies, which are favourable for a wider and meaningful inclusion of migrants and refugees. The regional human rights framework in the American continent underscores the vital function of birth registration in securing children’s right to their legal identity. Its regional jurisprudence has grown to support the universality of this right to every child without regards to migratory status. Beyond legal concepts, there is also so much to explore in terms of interventions along paralegal services and advocacy, social mobilization, and digitization in removing barriers to birth registration in this region. These are the aspects of best practices through cross-regional learning that my research sought to gather. The region’s tolerant citizenship framework that upholds pluralism and diversity came under greater pressure for reform in the wake of discontent and Presenter at The World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2019. JUN 2021 16 |