19. (2) Subject to Clause (9), the Federal Government may, in such special circumstances as it thinks fit, upon application made by any person of or over the age of twenty-one years who is not a citizen, grant a certificate of naturalisation to that person if satisfied— (a) that he has resided in the Federation for the required periods and intends, if the certificate is granted, to do so permanently; (b) that he is of good character; and (c) that he has an adequate knowledge of the Malay language. This method of citizenship acquisition may be the only available remedy for certain stateless populations, primarily stateless individuals above the age of 21 (i.e. abandoned children, stateless children, children born out of wedlock, children born abroad to Malaysian mothers) or non-Malaysian husbands married to Malaysian citizens, because they exceed the age limit to qualify for citizenship by registration under 15A. However, similarly with applications filed under Article 15A, there are issues such as a lack of clear guidelines, a lack of transparency, no requirement to give reasons for rejection, no time limits set on the processing of applications, and no procedural rules for appeals (Low, 2017). For example, to fulfil the condition of proving residence in the country for the required period, the applicant must submit their passport along with the entry permit. This would be impossible for many in situ stateless populations who were born and have since resided in Malaysia to fulfil, as their statelessness prohibits them from qualifying for a passport. Instead, this method has been used to fast-track and grant citizenship to footballers of foreign nationality or mixed parentage with Malaysian ancestry as part of an initiative between Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and JPN, to improve Malaysian football performance (“FAM suspend naturalisation project”, 2021). The strict documentation requirements and arbitrary process makes citizenship by naturalisation highly inaccessible for many of the stateless populations in this research. 3.3.4 Renunciation and deprivation of nationality This section discusses how a citizen can lose their Malaysian nationality either by renouncing it or being deprived of it by the Federal Government. 61