KUCHING, May 11: Issuing temporary documents and forming the Special Committee for Citizenship under Article 15A of the Federal Constitution are among six initiatives by Sarawak government to improve education rights of stateless and undocumented children or individuals.
According to Minister of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah, the Sarawak government also established a special task force to address the issue of Sarawakians without citizenship status.
“This includes establishing Community Learning Centres in palm oil plantations, implementation of ‘A Comprehensive Study on the Causative Factors Leading to Stateless Children in Sarawak’, and a Randau Social Development advocacy programme.
“These initiatives aim to provide opportunities for eligible individuals to obtain access to education, health services, employment opportunities and legal marriage status,” she said.
Fatimah said this during the ‘Round Table Discussion: The Educational Rights of Refugee and Stateless Children’ programme organised by Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) together with Asia Displacement Solutions Platform (ADSP) and European Humanitarian Union Aid in Putrajaya yesterday (May 10).
Fatimah said in order to properly identify stateless and undocumented children or individuals, they are grouped into four categories.
“The categories are namely, children with stateless status or undetermined citizenship status, non-citizen children, local children without identification documents, and Indonesian children under the age of 12 where their parents work in plantations in Sarawak,” she said. — DayakDaily
