Human Rights And Statelessness I N P E N I N S U L AR M AL AYS I A 3.4.2 How the framing and implementation of citizenship laws cause in situ statelessness Although Malaysia subscribes to a combination of both jus soli and jus sanguinis principles of citizenship, the jus sanguinis principle seems to play a more prominent role for citizenship determination (Rodziana Mohamed Razali et. al., 2015). This was observed based on the administrative rules on citizenship set out by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the stricter qualifications introduced via the Constitutional (Amendment) Act 1962 to prove a genuine and effective link to a country (as discussed in Section 3.4 on nationality provisions). The application of the jus sanguinis principle in citizenship procedures and rules by the Ministry of Home Affairs and JPN imposes strict requirements for persons born in Malaysia. Figure 5 shows how JPN has created new sets of citizenship determination rules that are solely conditional on the parents’ nationality status (citizen, permanent resident, non-citizen) and the status of the marriage at the time of birth. This infographic has been criticised by civil society as being unconstitutional and giving ‘false narratives’ on citizenship entitlement (“Latheefa Criticises Home Ministry”, 2021). This imposition of parents’ statuses of nationality and marriage violates Article 14(1)(e) under Part II of the Second Schedule which stipulates any person born in Malaysia who is not a citizen of any country is considered a Malaysian citizen by operation of law. The citizenship determination rules outlined by JPN disproportionately favours exclusion criteria instead of inclusion criteria for citizenship qualification, resulting in a high number of in situ stateless persons who are unable to prove their links due to administrative, discriminatory, financial or legal barriers and very few successful cases of in situ stateless persons acquiring citizenship through the existing legal provisions and administrative processes. As established in Section 1.8, five out of the eight in situ stateless populations born in Malaysia – persons with longstanding residence since pre-independence, indigenous persons, undocumented persons, adopted children, and abandoned children – are rendered ‘administratively’ stateless because they lack the formal documentation needed for citizenship application processes and are subject to arbitrary citizenship determination by JPN. Despite their genuine and long-standing links to 70