Human Rights And Statelessness I N P E N I N S U L AR M AL AYS I A The lack of marital status of parents before the child is born is the main cause for children born out of wedlock to become stateless. There are many reasons for parents not registering their marriage, including: issues with divorce from a previous marriage not being finalised, parents being unaware of the importance of marriage registration for citizenship conferment, or a situation where only a customary marriage or marriage outside of Malaysia took place (Liew, 2019). In the case of Venkateswaran’s three children, born out of a registered marriage to a Malaysian father and Indonesian mother, the three were denied citizenship because their mother was not present during the registration of the children (Malaysia Nanban, 2017, April 27). The most recent court case was an appeal for Malaysian citizenship by CTEB, a 10-year-old who was born in the Philippines to unmarried parents (a Malaysian father and a Filipino mother), which was dismissed by the Federal Court (CTEB & Anor. v Ketua Pengarah Pendaftaran Negara Malaysia & Ors., 2021). This is because the parents married after the child was born which excluded him from being a citizen by operation of law under Article 14 of the Federal Constitution (Bernama, 2021). Nalvin Dhillon, whose mother is Filipino and father is Malaysian, was ineligible for Malaysian citizenship because his parents’ marriage was not registered and his mother was not a Malaysian (Imran Ariff, 2021). A teenage girl born in Perak to a Malaysian father and a Filipino mother was denied citizenship because the parents registered their marriage two years after she was born (Lim, 2021). Andy’s appeal for Malaysian citizenship for his son was dismissed by the Shah Alam High Court because he was not married to his Indonesian wife at the time of his son’s birth (Thomas, 2021). However, there also seem to be favourable decisions for children born out of wedlock in other courts. LFK’s child who was born out of wedlock appealed at the High Court to conduct a DNA test to prove LFK’s paternity, and subsequently applied the court order demanding the NRD to correct the record of the child’s birth certificate. The judge ruled in favour of LFK’s child by citing Section 28 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957 which requires the NRD to obtain the most accurate information by all means (Anbalagan, 2021). In another case, the High Court declared OXT to be the legitimate child of her parents in September 2019 because Malaysian laws allow non-Muslim couples to legitimise their children by 36