Malaysia – Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, May 2024

Family Frontiers (FF), Nationality for All (NFA), the Statelessness and Dignified Citizenship Coalition – Asia Pacific (SDCC – AP), the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights (GCENR), Equality Now and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) make this joint submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to be used to inform the Committee’s review of Malaysia. This joint submission expresses our concerns regarding gender discrimination in Malaysia’s nationality law, as enshrined in the Constitution of Malaysia, including:

• The inability of women married to foreigners to confer their citizenship on their children born abroad on an equal basis with men;
• Women’s inability to confer citizenship on spouses, a right reserved for men; and
• The inability of unmarried Malaysian men to confer citizenship on children born out of wedlock on an equal basis with unmarried women.