SUHAKAM welcomes the increase in minimum wage for employees from RM1,200.00 to RM1,500.00 per month throughout Malaysia. Recommendation: ● Adopt a human rights-based approach to eradicate poverty. 3.2. Right to Education The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges in students’ access to education particularly children from economically disadvantaged families, or who live in rural areas including indigenous children in accessing online education. The marginalized non-citizen children such as refugees and stateless children face obstacles in attending public schools. The Ministry of Education (MoE)’s directive on the requirements for the 2024/2025 academic session stated that only Malaysian citizen's children born between 2 January 2017 and 1 January 2018 are eligible to apply for enrolment, implying that non-Malaysian children are excluded from this right. Recommendation: ● Take immediate action to ensure that all children, regardless of their legal status, have the right to access free and compulsory primary education in Government schools. 3.3. Right to Health Under the Twelfth Malaysia Plan (2021-2025), the Government has adopted strategies towards achieving universal access to quality healthcare for its citizens. In 2020, SUHAKAM organised consultations to discuss issues affecting women’s rights during the Movement Control Order (MCO). There was closure of public clinics providing affordable reproductive healthcare services which prevented non-Malaysian women comprising refugees, migrants, etc. from gaining access to healthcare. Similar dialogues were held in 2020 with other vulnerable communities such as migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons who had also faced challenges in fully accessing their fundamental right to healthcare. SUHAKAM remains committed to working closely with the detention authorities and the Ministry of Health (MoH) to ensure effective healthcare and reducing custodial deaths at places of detention. 5