Children of Filipino parentage born in Sabah, Malaysia could have hard time in getting birth certificates or do not have birth certificates at all. They are stateless children and they need help.
This writer was in Kota Kinabalu (KK) recently, while walking in the corridors of the busy business center of KK, a lass in checkered blouse and denim pant shouted near us “rokok, rokok, beli lah kamu rokok” (cigarette, cigarette, buy cigarette) as she waves packs of Indonesian and Philippine smuggled cigarettes to induce passers- by to buy her stuff in downtown KK, Sabah.
She is Ula Matusin, 10 year old girl of Filipino parentage from Basilan. I waved my hand signaling her to come closer to me and asked a pack of Suria. “Tiga ringgit (RM 3.00), she said in Malay.
I stared at her as I was amazed by her fluency of her second language though she has never gone to any school, she claimed. But Ula said she was forced into an early childhood labor because she could not go to school. She was denied entrance in all KK’s sekolah rendah (primary school) for having no birth certificate although she was born in Sabah. She is a stateless child.
Ula is not alone, hundreds or even more stateless children are like her in the different districts of Sabah, Malaysia. However, they do not exist even in the country of their birth much more in the country of their parent’s origin.
“I did like to go to school and want to learn,” she said. “I also have my ambition. I want to become a nurse someday but it is unfortunate I cannot see this dream to happen. My parents are illegal immigrants so I could not get a birth certificate that is a requirement for enrollment here,” she stressed.
Ula was not alone peddling illegal stuff like smuggled cigarettes; there were many boys and girls her age, and like her, are street kids in many places of the urban cities of Sabah, though born here but do not have birth certificates or any documentation to prove their nationality.
Living in legal midpoint, they are unable to access government services such as health and education or return lawfully to their parents’ countries.
The children that face days without access to school tend to grow up as child laborers in constructions and plantations or wander the streets where they are exposed to petty crimes, drugs, glue sniffing, and child abuse. If they are ill, they can only seek treatment at expensive private clinics, not at government hospitals.
These children’s predispositions and tendencies are primarily caused by being unjustifiably stateless.
Moreover, no one should anymore try to fault find.
What is needed to be done is how to extricate these stateless children from the bondage of illiteracy and help bring to them a non-formal education process and establish it in the cities of their stay.
Teaching our national language will inculcate and maintain their sense of nationalism as Filipinos, on the grounds of their biological parentage, vis-à-vis the literacy program sponsored by our national government that will make them read and write.
On the other hand, Liew Vui Keong, deputy minister in the prime minister’s department and a member of parliament for Sandakan constituency in Sabah, said that both host countries and countries of origin would have to work together to give some form of recognition to the stateless children and their parents.
“We cannot deny the fact that they’re already here,” he said. “We cannot just kick them out because where do they go? We cannot simply deny them of their rights to stay in a place where they were born,” Liew was quoted as saying in an interview by newsmen.
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