KUALA LUMPUR: Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) said the Home Ministry's pledge to have applicants of Malaysian citizenship know their application statuses within a year is a step in the right direction.
Family Frontiers, an NGO which champions citizenship rights, said it would not only help address the statelessness issue but was also a good initiative to ease the bureaucratic process for citizenship applicants.
It said applicants will have a better chance of accessing citizenship through existing provisions.
"In the past, applicants had to wait many years to find out the results of their applications, which often would be rejections.
"The long waiting period for citizenship approvals leaves applicants under immense pressure and uncertainty about their ability to stay in Malaysia," it said in a statement.
It said based on cases it had handled, the shortest time it took to approve a citizenship application was around two years, with the longest being 15 years.
"We have had an impacted child in our network who first applied for citizenship under Article 15(2) in 2009.
"She faced several rejections in her citizenship applications. Her most recent application in 2016 was approved in 2024, after eight years.
"This meant she waited a total of 15 years. The fastest applications are around two years, although these are rare cases."
The NGO rrepresentative called for clearer requirements and checklists of documents to ease the burden of bureaucracy for applicants.
Applicants, it said, should also not be required to spend exorbitant amounts of money on translation of documents.
"(Applicants) should also not be required to make multiple trips overseas for the verification of their documents.
"An impacted mother who was undergoing domestic abuse had to submit her documents overseas three times.
"This delayed her application process, increased her expenses and created more anxiety for her."
Family Frontiers also urged the government to provide proper reasons for application rejections to avoid applicants reapplying without clear direction.
"Documents that are not mentioned in the checklist should not be included at the discretion of the NRD officer.
"The National Registration Department officers are very thorough and do not accept any incomplete documentation. As such, applicants are unable to know where they went wrong while submitting their applications.
"In some instances, mothers with citizenship applications under Article 15(2) for two children have received approval for one child and a rejection for another," it said.
Meanwhile, the Malaysian Citizenship Rights Alliance (MCRA), a coalition of NGOs, cautioned that removing constitutional protections and relying on standard operating procedure (SOP) for protection creates room for excessive and arbitrary government discretion.
The NGO raised concerns that the SOP would only guarantee a process instead of a positive outcome, which is what children born to Malaysian parents seek.
It said based on cases it handled, the longest ongoing application without a decision was seven years while the quickest approval was between two and three years.
MCRA also called for safeguards in the Federal Constitution to avoid eroding the existing rights of Malaysian children and indigenous people.