Govt drops foundlings citizenship change after backlash

• UPDATED 6.57PM | Added MCRA’s response to government dropping amendment.

The cabinet today agreed to cancel the Home Ministry's proposal to amend the Federal Constitution regarding the right to grant citizenship to foundlings.

The ministry had previously proposed the repeal of Section 19B of Part III of the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution, and Section 1(e) of the same section in the same schedule.

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.

READ MORE: KINIGUIDE | How could constitutional changes make more people stateless?

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.

Section 19B states: "Any newborn child found abandoned without protection in any place shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have been born in that place and its mother is permanently resident in that place; and if the child deemed by the authority of this section to have been born as such, then the date he was found shall be deemed to be his date of birth."

The Second Schedule, Part II Section 1(e) gives citizenship by law to every stateless individual born in Malaysia.

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”.

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