KUCHING: Planning to get married? If the answer is yes, better do it legally. Welfare, Community Well-being, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah, feels strongly about this because there are many children born of marriages that were not registered with the relevant authorities.
“I always remind people that when they want to get married, they must adhere to the laws. A Malaysian marrying an Indonesian, for example, must register under our law as well as the Indonesian one. Then when their child is born he/she will not become a foreigner or stateless.”
The state of being stateless, as understood by the United Nations’ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refers to “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”.
In simple terms, this means that a stateless person is not a national of any country. Some people are born stateless, while others become stateless.
This is why Fatimah reiterated yesterday (while on a visit to Pusat Pendidikan D’Wira at No. 99, Swee Joo Park, Sky Garden), that parents, whether they are legally married or not, must register the births of their children with the National Registration Department.
She said a predicament that a child can be in is that even though the father is a Malaysian he/she might be born out of wedlock, or the parents’ marriage was not properly registered, or the marriage was not in accordance with Malaysian or foreign laws.
“So when the child is born, the parents can’t register him or her. If the mother is, say, an Indonesian, then he or she will assume the citizenship of the mother,” Fatimah explained.
“Later on when the child applies for a birth certificate, the father’s name can’t be entered in the application form because there is no marriage certificate or the marriage of the parents has not been registered
