COMMENT It was reported that more than a thousand Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees have just arrived on the Malaysian shore.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) report titled “Irregular Maritime Movement”, about 25,000 people are estimated to have departed from the Bay of Bengal in the first quarter of 2015, with the hope of reaching Malaysia by sea.

Therefore, we believe that this is just the beginning of more refugees arriving in Malaysia in the days to come.

Even before this large-scale influx of refugees, Malaysia is already one of the top destinations for refugees in the Southeast Asia region, with a total of 250,930 people seeking refuge, including 115,700 refugees and others such as asylum seekers, stateless people and so on.

As of now, we lack any legislative and administrative framework to address the refugee problem. UNHCR’s working relationship with the Malaysian government is only limited to the prevention of deportation and detention intervention.

Refugees recognised by the UNHCR are only allowed to work unofficially (usually on extremely low wages) and the children of refugees are not allowed to go to national schools.

Such circumstances, if not addressed properly, will soon bring social problems such as more stateless children, poverty and rise in crime.

‘Stop being in denial’

Since Malaysia did not sign the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees nor the 1967 Protocol to recognise the rights of refugees, the current government policy is to accept refugees into the country only temporarily, while waiting for their resettlement in third countries, including Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and the United States.

The “can’t see, can’t hear” system is framed in such a way as if refugees don’t exist in the country.

Nevertheless, it was reported that the number of places available for resettlement in third countries for the refugees in Malaysia is shrinking rapidly.

Coupled with this current wave of refugee influx, we believe that the population of refugees in Malaysia will continue to grow and they will stay here for a long time.

The question now is, can Malaysia’s refugee policy remain status quo in the face of the rising number of refugees?

Should we recognise the status of refugees and their rights? What cross-boundary solutions should we advocate?

Pertinent questions we have to answer

How can we get funding from the international community to help with refugee management in Malaysia?

Can the refugees in Malaysia continue to hold on to extremely low paying jobs, live in poor conditions and yet not pose safety problems to us?

Can the children of refugees continue to be deprived of formal education?

How can we protect women refugees from sexual exploitation?

These are some pertinent questions that we will eventually have to answer. It’s better that we do now, rather than later.

We believe that the refugee issue in Malaysia can be handled more comprehensively and the government can assume greater responsibility to help with the current efforts made by UNHCR and NGOs.

With that, we call upon the government to form a non-partisan refugee committee comprising representatives from both sides of the political divide, relevant NGOs and international organisations such as UNHCR to spearhead reform for a legislative and administrative framework to deal with issues related to refugees.

YEO BEE YIN is DAP’s Damansara Utama assemblyperson.

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