How much more does a Malaysian mother have to prove to her own nation that her own flesh and blood, born outside of her home country, carries the same value as a Malaysian father’s?
“Lain kali go marry a local Malaysian men [sic] abroad if you want your kids to have Malaysian citizenships.”
“The law is to protect Malaysian women as our precious asset, so please think and choose wisely before getting marry [sic].”
“Government always follow the dad. This is something u need to adapt to.”
From xenophobic comments that deem children born abroad as “outsiders” and “threats to national security”, to ones that outright penalise Malaysian women for marrying abroad and tell them to have their children follow the father’s citizenship as they presumably “follow the father’s surname”, or because the fathers were “heads of their households”, these were what Malaysian mothers contended with over Twitter when they shared their personal struggles on conferring citizenship to their children.
The crux of the issue faced by Malaysian women abroad boils down to the patrilineal interpretation of our citizenship laws, and society’s lack of awareness towards the challenges presented to these women because of said interpretation. On September 9, 2021, the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that the government must grant citizenship to children born overseas to Malaysian mothers with foreign spouses. However, that ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal in August 2022.
The ruling of September 2021 initially meant that the word “father”, as stated in the Second Schedule of the Constitution, would include mothers and thus allow them to automatically confer citizenship as well. But the overruling of this interpretation in August 2022, meant that despite the provisions of Article 14(1) (b) being in direct conflict with Article 8(2), which states that “there shall be no discrimination against citizens on the ground only of religion, race, descent, place or gender”, the word “father” was ruled not to be construed to include mothers, nor could it be interpreted to mean “parents”.
While the mothers are allowed to apply for their children’s citizenship via Article 15(2), because she is “at least is (or was at death) a [Malaysian] citizen”—that application however takes months, and even years, to be processed. Based on the Home Ministry’s response to Segambut’s member of parliament (MP) Hannah Yeoh’s request to compare the data between the citizenship applications of both Malaysian mothers and fathers in November 29, 2021, it states that Malaysian fathers have a 63.81 per cent approval rate when it came to applying for their overseasborn children’s citizenship from 2010 to October 11, 2021—out of the total 6,611 applications, 4,218 were approved. For Malaysian mothers, only 951 applications were approved out of the 6,296 (15 per cent) that were issued within the same 11-year period.
