Human Rights And Statelessness I N P E N I N S U L AR M AL AYS I A 1.2 Definition of statelessness and categories of interest In this study, we refer to stateless populations in Peninsular Malaysia in two contexts, in situ statelessness in a non-migratory context, and stateless persons with a migratory context. In situ statelessness involves stateless people in a non-migratory context who find themselves stateless in their own country of birth. A working definition for in situ statelessness is stateless persons “who are in their ‘own country’, meaning a country with which they have significant and stable ties through birth, long term residence etc.” (Gyulai, 2012). These are persons who were born and have lived their entire lives in the country but are unable to acquire nationality because they may lack the necessary documentation. Statelessness in situ is often the result of the framing and implementation of nationality laws (UNHCR, 2014). We refer to seven of the stateless populations as statelessness in situ: persons with long-standing residence since pre-independence and their descendants, abandoned children born in Malaysia, adopted children in Malaysia, children of ‘mixed’ marriages or cases where children were born out of wedlock, children born outside of Malaysia to Malaysian mothers and non-Malaysian fathers, indigenous persons, and undocumented persons. These in situ stateless persons can be considered as ‘administratively’ stateless persons as they are entitled to legal recognition in the country but are unable to access citizenship due to administrative, financial, legal, or discriminatory barriers. A person who qualifies for citizenship but has not acquired citizenship is considered as stateless regardless of their past or future claims and qualifications to citizenship. On the other hand, stateless persons in a migratory context are persons who have a migratory background, such as refugees or migrants who have no genuine and effective links with the country they live in, and so do not automatically qualify for Malaysian citizenship. Some stateless refugees who have lived in Malaysia for a long period of time may qualify for citizenship but they can only apply for citizenship by naturalisation or registration, and must meet the requirements to establish their genuine and effective link to Malaysia (Liew, 2019). 6