Kota Kinabalu: Children must be included in decisions that affect them instead of being left out of advocacy efforts, said human rights advocate Mary-Anne Baltazar.
“We adults tend to think we know better based on what we believe is the best interest of the child. But we have to remember child participation matters too. We have to always listen to what the child wants,” said the Advocates for Non-Discrimination and Access to Knowledge (ANAK) founder.
Baltazar was among the panellists at the inaugural Child Safeguarding Conference held recently at the Sabah International Convention Centre.
The conference is jointly organised by the Child Safeguarding Initiative (CSI), the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia and the Sabah Council of Social Services.
For the record, ANAK is a Sabah-based grassroots non-profit organisation dedicated to upholding the rights of every child in Sabah.
Baltazar, a PhD candidate with over 16 years of experience in children’s rights, statelessness, child labour and migration in Sabah, said ANAK’s work centres on paralegal documentation, helping families apply for birth certificates and citizenship.
She said all children can and must be registered at birth under the mandate of the National Registration Department, but registration does not automatically grant citizenship. Green birth certificates are issued to citizens and red certificates to non-citizens.
“Most of ANAK’s citizenship cases involve children between 11 and 16 years old still waiting for recognition even though one parent is a Malaysian citizen, calling the process long and difficult,” she said.
She said the scale of need in Sabah, home to 3.4 million people across a landmass roughly half the size of Peninsular Malaysia, requires organisations to work collectively rather than in isolation.
“The CSI is an example of such collective efforts that brings together groups covering indigenous communities, gender-based violence, statelessness and children with disabilities,” she said.
For the record, the CSI is a collaborative council established in May 2024 by a coalition of non-governmental organisations and associations, with founding members including ANAK, Persatuan Tadika Sabah, Persatuan C.H.I.L.D. Sabah, Persatuan Perkhidmatan Taska Sabah and Pacos Trust.
She cited another example of collective effort that secured citizenship rights for children born to Malaysian mothers overseas as among the success stories of collaboration, following a Federal Constitution amendment passed but yet to take effect.
“Before this, if you are a Malaysian woman and you give birth outside the country, your child cannot get automatic citizenship. Because of the constitutional amendment, Malaysian women are now able to pass on citizenship to their children,” she said.
She said the change came after two years of research, evidence gathering and lobbying by the Malaysian Citizenship Rights Alliance, a coalition of non-governmental organisations from Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah.
“If the mother is a Malaysian citizen and the child is born here, the child is automatically a citizen.
It does not depend on the father, because under our Federal Constitution, the highest law of the land, it is the mother’s status that matters when the child is born in Malaysia,” she said.
The alliance also succeeded in blocking two of five regressive amendments proposed alongside the reform and later formed the All-Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia, bringing NGOs together with cross party parliamentarians on child rights issues.
She said the group held the first ever Parliament symposium on child rights recently.
For the record, the Dewan Rakyat passed the Constitution Amendment Bill 2024 on citizenship with a two-thirds majority on October 2024.
The amendment ensures children born abroad to Malaysian mothers married to foreign men will automatically acquire Malaysian citizenship, a right previously granted only if the father was Malaysian.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said earlier this year that the change is expected to take effect by June or July 2026.
