Malaysia – Submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child 100th Pre-Sessional Working Group, September 2025

Equality Now joined Advocates for Non-discrimination and Access to Knowledge (ANAK), Association of Family Support & Welfare Selangor & KL (Family Frontiers), Borneo Komrad, Iskul Sama diLaut Omadal (Iskul), Buku Jalanan Chow Kit, Yayasan Chow Kit, Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas (DHRRA) Malaysia, Elom Initiatives (Elom), Nationality for All (NFA), Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights (GCENR), Child Identity Protection (CHIP), and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) in this submission regarding Malaysia’s compliance with every child’s right to acquire and preserve a nationality under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter the CRC).

What’s included in the submission?

This thematic submission is based on the co-submitting organizations’ expertise and considerable efforts to address the issues of childhood statelessness and realize every child’s right to acquire a nationality in Malaysia. This submission focuses on:

• Procedural and implementation challenges with regard to the child’s right to a nationality in Malaysia;
• Issues affecting certain categories of stateless children in the acquisition of Malaysian nationality;
• Latest developments on provisions on childhood statelessness and discriminatory nationality law; and
• Consequences of childhood statelessness and discriminatory nationality law in Malaysia.

Who’s it for?

• Committee on the Rights of the Child
• Law and policymakers 
• Legal professionals
• Government institutions

Key recommendations

• Ensure that the equal right to nationality of all children, including those who are stateless or at risk of statelessness, is respected and fulfilled, including by eliminating gender discrimination in the law.
• Enhance administrative processes to facilitate the acquisition or verification of children’s citizenship and reduce the high application costs for claims to citizenship.
• Ensure the equal right to education and healthcare of stateless children and non-citizen children of Malaysians.
• Ensure that no children of refugees, asylum seekers, or stateless people and their families are subject to arbitrary immigration detention in Malaysia.