Starting from scratch: Documenting stateless children

JUNE 30 — This takes the cake. We’ve started this documentation project for a few months now, and as a volunteer project co-ordinator, I’m pulling my hair out because none of us know how to begin.

There is a sure ending: to provide the government of Malaysia a review of the Adoption Act (civil and Syariah) and a qualitative and quantitative study on (1) statelessness (2) the number of stateless children, using Chow Kit as a pilot project and (3) why they remain or choose to be stateless and undocumented. The team works with Voice of Children, an advocacy group for children.

The two-pronged project support each other. Still it is a gargantuan task for us, as we are hampered by very little statistics and findings which we take home, and weep over privately. Did you know

Chinese baby boys are popular, and sold at RM10,000 per kg while a poor Malay girl costs just RM600… the whole baby?

There’s even a “fatwa” which I do not believe the National Fatwa Council has anything to do with: an abandoned child is a ward of the state, and hence is deemed a Muslim instantly after the “40-Day fatwa” (the child is deemed a Muslim after over 40 days of abandonment). Nobody knows the origin of this “fatwa.”

The Legal Review team, together with VoC, have a formidable challenge ahead of them: ultimately the children who are at risk are Malays, ergo Muslim. This means the Syarie Council of Malaysia will have to be involved.

The lawyers will not only have to moot new or revised policies on adoption for non-Muslim and Muslim children but also may face the wrath of not just the Syarie Council but also Jabatan Kebajikan Malaysia, to name a few.

Then there are the matters of trafficking and statelessness. All these are co-related and not pretty to deal with. There are two types of adoption processes: civil and Muslim. The team has to look at issuing birth certificates or identification for these children, and then a group documentation. However, who will register the children?

At a meeting, a lawyer tells us that he is unable to access or find any documentation on stateless children from Islamic texts and journals. Such an incidence never occurred during the Prophet Mohammad's (PBUH) time. Surely, we ask, a halal policy or legislation can be created to protect the child and give him rights to basic education and healthcare? Just because stateless children didn't exist then, it doesn’t mean that they are to be ignored now!

What you are reading now is just the macro issues. The micro issues of where the Muslim girls are, for example, is a crucial and complex matter to resolve. Nursalam’s Dr Hartini Zainudin noticed that when the shelter was first opened, there was an almost equal number of young boys and girls who visited.

These days, their absence is pronounced. Where are the Muslims girls? Have they been married off in a syndicate scam, or in bona fide marriages? Are they at home caring for a family? These young women are also unable to marry because they do not have a wali to represent them.

Errant or dead fathers are to blame. These young women lose all their rights, to just survive. Emails fly in and out of our in-boxes. Exhilarating and also very confusing.

The Documentation Team have also hit a brick wall. I speak to the Merdeka Center which conducts surveys. Hazman brings up a valid point. For this project, no way can telephone interviews be conducted and neither can face to face sessions happen.

Who would admit to being stateless, so should we break down a door in one of the many faceless rented rooms in Chow Kit? Who would admit to being a child of a sex worker or drug addict? We could even be harmed. We would need security. Who conducts such surveys with bodyguards?

So we start afresh. Some days we feel like we’re grasping at straws. Some days we think we have leads.  And some days, we believe we are going to make it.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.