The Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy joins in the concerns and objections to a number of proposed amendments to the citizenship provisions of the Federal Constitution as expressed by civil society organisations, such as Family Frontiers Malaysia and national human rights institution, Suhakam.
If passed, these regressive amendments, which will remove existing citizenship rights from a select category of persons, will cause tremendous harm, create new groups of marginalised people, exacerbate suffering, and widen the gap of health disparity and inequity amongst already vulnerable individuals, most of whom would be infants in the early years of their lives.
In many countries, the stateless are automatically stripped of the capacity to access basic rights, among them, the right to health. This can and will happen even to children.
In Malaysia, public and private health services are generally accessible to all, even if a person is of undetermined status. However, as anyone who has been stateless or is currently living with that status, real life access and care may be altogether different.
Such individuals and their caregivers would be subject to paying non-citizens fees at public hospitals and more likely pay out of their pockets for medical treatment. It is not likely that they would have health insurance.
Any sickness or injury, however minor, could be costly and prohibitive. As a result, those who are stateless or caring for such individuals may be fearful of having to pay high hospital and treatment bills.
Fear of persecution by the authorities keeps them from seeking and accessing health care until it becomes absolutely necessary and is more expensive. They will face increased racism, discrimination and xenophobia, while trying to access critical health services or even information.
The stateless face huge obstacles and barriers to accessing services that many of us take for granted. For stateless individuals, every instance of ill health could be a life and death situation.
Why would we want to deliberately classify hundreds or even thousands of newborns, infants, and adolescents as being stateless, inflicting hardship on foundlings both in the present and in the future? Far from alleviating national security concerns, this policy could dramatically increase health security risk and vulnerabilities.
The proposed amendment to Section 19B Part III of the Second Schedule, requiring any person to register foundlings within one year, is regressive. The child is deprived of citizenship due to parental, third-party neglect or simply, bad luck.
The five amendments, which seek to remove protections from vulnerable children against the threat of statelessness, should be decoupled and voted on separately.
However, we add our voice in support of the life-changing proposal to amend Article 14(1)(b) of the Federal Constitution to recognize gender equality by ensuring that Malaysian women are able to confer citizenship to their children born overseas by operation by law, on an equal basis with men.
Azrul Mohd Khalib is the chief executive of the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
