2.7 Stateless refugees 2.7.1 Causation of statelessness Not all refugees are stateless and not all stateless persons are refugees. This is because statelessness and forced migration are interlinked where statelessness can lead to forced displacement but forced displacement can also lead to statelessness. Being stateless and a refugee can make people more vulnerable to harm as compared to a non-stateless refugee (Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and the Norwegian Refugee Council, 2016). Refugees can be stateless in two contexts. Firstly, a refugee who held a nationality prior to displacement may lose their identity documents and be unable to prove their link with their home country. Over time, intergenerational statelessness occurs because their children born outside their home country become stateless due to a conflict of nationality laws. Second, a person can be discriminated against and arbitrarily deprived of their nationality by their own government. In this case, stateless refugees may not be able to return to their country of origin because they are not nationals and do not have the right to enter and remain in their country of origin or any other country. Being a refugee and stateless makes people more vulnerable to harm and violence, as compared to non-stateless refugees, because they are at higher risk of detention or expulsion due to a lack of identity documents. 2.7.2 Scale of issue The largest population of stateless refugees in Peninsular Malaysia are the Rohingya refugees who make up 103,560 out of the 181,510 refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR Malaysia in 2022 (UNHCR, 2022). The Rohingya are subject to inconsistent government statements and policies. The government announced in 2004 that they would regularise the stay of the Rohingya in Malaysia to allow them to work without fear of arrest. There was also an attempt in 2006 to grant IMM-133 documents to the Rohingya but it failed to go through (Tamara 3 IMM-13 documents are issued to Filipino refugees and migrants to reside and work in Malaysia. 39