° • analysing and identifying the pattern of court cases related to obtaining citizenship in Malaysia; ° analysing the geographical locations of stateless populations, including demographic composition; ° understanding the interrelation between these issues and human rights violations in this country as determined by international law. Define the scale of the issue by ° estimating the size (in terms of numbers) of various categories of stateless people living in Malaysia, such as by age group and geographical spread; ° understanding the effects of statelessness and scale of the issues; ° assessing the economic risks and social costs of inaction; ° assessing the readiness of the government in dealing with and tracking down cases in light of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst stateless people. Based on the findings from the first objective, the second objective then is to provide solutions and recommendations in order to make progress on the issue of statelessness in Peninsular Malaysia. Specifically, we do the following: • Comprehensively review laws (civil and syariah laws) that are inadequate and/ or not in line with human rights principles as well as those favouring (and/ or in line with human rights principles); e.g. the recognition of adopted children under Section 1(a) of the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution, the recognition of citizenship of children who are born in Malaysia that did not obtain foreign citizenship within one year under Section 1(e), the wide discretion of the government to register a person under the age of 21 as a citizen under special circumstances in article 15A, and also the Legitimacy Act 1961; a. conduct a comparison study to identify best practices from other countries (single and dual/ multiple citizenship) in addressing statelessness issues; b. based on the facts and findings of this research, develop recommendations to the federal and state governments relating, but not limited to: 9