NOW/HERE I Belong: Latheefa Koya, Lawyers for Liberty

The NOW/HERE I Belong series features Latheefa Koya to speak on the issues of statelessness and the impact that it has on stateless individuals.

“When a person is undocumented, even if they want to get married and have kids, they cannot, so it is a vicious cycle. When the parents cannot register themselves, their next generation ends up being considered illegitimate and stateless as well, and this continues on to another generation.”

“Lawyers for Liberty has been taking up statelessness cases for more than 10 years. In Malaysia, being stateless means a person has not been given any documentation to prove that they are a citizen. They may have been born in Malaysia and their parents are Malaysians or permanent residents, yet they are not granted citizenship or recognized as citizens. It could be that certain information from their birth certificate is missing, or the government has not produced the necessary documents for them. That is how they end up as a stateless person.”

“As a Malaysian citizen, you are allocated an identification card (IC) and with that IC, you can go to school, seek for employment, open a bank account, and even go to a government hospital and get access to public healthcare. When a person is stateless and without the necessary documentation, they are denied basic rights; such as the right to education. Some of the students who are denied access to higher education are the nation’s brightest students who get straight A’s in school, but they are not allowed to enroll in a public university because of their lack of documentation.”

“So, what happens to an innocent child who is born illegitimate? Here is the situation, when it comes to a child who is illegitimate where the mother is a Malaysian and the father is a foreigner, according to the interpretation of the Federal Constitution, the child follows the mother’s nationality, but if you turn it around, if the father is Malaysian and the mother is non-Malaysian, then the child still has to follow the mother’s nationality, this is where it becomes sticky.

We have cases where the child may have been abandoned by the mother, or the parents cannot marry because the child is born out of wedlock or was the outcome of an affair. The child will be stuck whereby he/she is born Malaysian, but would not be deemed Malaysian, and this is unfair.”

“For those out there who want to do something for the people or help, you must have empathy and understanding of what they are talking about, to understand someone who may not speak the same language as you, who are not from the same background as you and who are not as lucky as you are. That satisfaction of helping to improve their lives or whatever situation that they are in is not tangible, but it is a satisfaction that you will forever be grateful for.” - Latheefa Koya

Story captured for ⚖📌👁‍🗨 NOW/HERE I BELONG | LexisNexis Malaysia

#NOWHEREIBELONG is a series of stories featuring thought leaders, NGOs and our own colleagues on their experiences and involvement in working on #statelessness

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Latheefa Koya is a practicing lawyer, an advocate for stateless children and the Executive Director of Lawyers for Liberty. She was previously involved in numerous initiatives including the Bar Council’s Legal Aid Centre, Refugees and Migrants Clinic, Immigration Law Reform Committee, and Suara Rakyat Malaysia.

#LN4ROL #lexisnexismalaysia