Human Rights And Statelessness I N P E N I N S U L AR M AL AYS I A 3.1 Malaysia’s international and regional obligations on statelessness Malaysia has not acceded to the two key international treaties on statelessness, the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons 1954 (1954 Convention) and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness 1961 (1961 Convention). Malaysia has also not acceded to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) and its protocol despite hosting 179,779 refugees and asylum seekers and 111,298 stateless persons registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2020).The right to nationality is also articulated in other international human rights conventions such as the ICCPR, CRC, CEDAW, ICERD and CRPD, as shown in Table 6, demonstrating how stateless persons are still entitled to general human rights protections across these human rights treaties. However, most articles related to the right to nationality among the treaties Malaysia has acceded to have been reserved: Article 7 of the CRC; Article 9 of the CEDAW; and Article 18 of the CRPD. The reservation to these articles means Malaysia is not legally bound to abide by these provisions on the right to nationality. Therefore, the use of international law is very limited on issues on statelessness and is limited to domestic law (Tamara J. Duraisingam & Harmahinder Singh Iqbal Singh, 2020). Malaysia must accede to the following treaties – the 1954 Convention, 1961 Convention, 1951 Convention, ICCPR, and ICERD, as well as remove the reservations on the articles related to the right to nationality in the CRC, CEDAW, and CRPD, in order to provide a foundation for Malaysia to start fulfilling its obligations towards the prevention and reduction of statelessness. The accession to these treaties upholds Malaysia’s obligations to protect and fulfil the human rights of all stateless persons in Malaysia, as enshrined in the fundamental liberties guaranteed in Articles 5 to 13 under Part II of the Federal Constitution. Beyond domestic legislation, Malaysia adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, a regional human rights declaration which has a provision on the right to nationality under Article 18, which states that “Every person has the right to a nationality as prescribed by law.” Malaysia has also broadly accepted the provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as customary 44