Govt drops foundlings citizenship change after backlash

The cabinet today agreed to maintain Section 19B of the Federal Constitution, which allows citizenship through naturalisation to foundlings.

In a press conference, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said he presented the constitutional amendments to the cabinet, which then discussed them at length.

“The cabinet discussed the matter today after I presented the (amendments). All the proposed amendments took into account feedback from all quarters, including the prime minister, component parties’ chiefs, and chief whips of the unity government.

“All the proposals presented by the Home Ministry were agreed upon, except that Section 19B of the constitution, read together with Section 14 (1) will be maintained as it is,” Saifuddin told reporters in Putrajaya this afternoon.

Section 19B of Part III of the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution relates to the conferment of citizenship rights by operation of law to foundlings and stateless children.

The proposed amendment had sought to change this to citizenship by registration.

Concerns remain

In an immediate response, the Malaysian Citizenship Rights Alliance (MCRA) welcomed a part of the government’s decisions, while raising some outstanding concerns.

“We laud the move by the cabinet to proceed with the tabling of amendments that will grant Malaysian mothers the equal right to confer citizenship to their overseas-born children.

“We also applaud the government’s move to drop Section 19B of Part III of the Second Schedule and Section 1(e) of Part II of the Second Schedule from the proposed bill on citizenship amendments,” said the group of citizenship and stateless rights activists.

“These provisions will ensure that vulnerable groups of children, including foundlings, children who are stateless and undocumented, will continue to have access to Malaysian citizenship by operation of law.

“The decision to no longer amend these provisions will ensure that no child in Malaysia gets left behind, which is very much in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Madani values,” said MCRA.

At the same time, it noted that the ministry still intends to pursue three other constitutional amendments with a negative impact on stateless children, undocumented Malaysians including Orang Asli and Orang Asal, and foreign wives of Malaysian men.

The three other proposed amendments refer to:

Section 1(a) Part II of the Second Schedule to delete the words “permanently resident”;

Article 26(2) to replace the word “date of the marriage” with “date of obtaining citizenship”; and Articles 15A and 19(2) on reducing the age limit for the purposes of obtaining citizenship from “21 years” to “18 years”. - Mkini