IVY Sherly’s parents were so preoccupied with moving house around the time that she was born that they forgot to register her birth in 2005 within the 42-day timeframe as required by law.

As a result, her application for the MyKad identification card was rejected by the National Registration Department (NRD) when she turned 12 last year.

Her parents, Venus Jaimi and Debra Dapil, said they were plagued with the logistics and financial burdens of moving from Kota Kinabalu to Keningau at that time, but didn’t expect to face any difficulties in getting their third child registered at a later date.

“We never had this problem with my two older children, although we were married in the kampung,” said Jaimi.

“But the law changed when we had Ivy. We didn’t take it too seriously then.”

A kampung marriage is not registered with NRD, but Jaimi said they did not have any trouble registering the births of their first two children.

Without her MyKad, Ivy will be unable to continue her studies and find it difficult to land decent jobs in the future.

Ivy is just one of an estimated 60,000 stateless children spread out across Sabah, according to a census carried by the coalition of civil society groups called Gannos.

She, like many countless “genuine Sabahans” denied MyKads, had found herself stateless as a result of poverty, bad connectivity, and lack of awareness by her parents.

But today, Ivy and some 300 families with issues of statelessness were called in by the Sabah courts to have their birth certificates sorted out in Keningau.

This is the third such event held by Chief Minister Shafie Apdal to resolve various issues like land disputes, migrants, and stateless persons. The first two sessions were held in Semporna and Kota Marudu recently.

Chief Justice Richard Malanjum, who led a team from the Sabah mobile court at the session, noted the issue of stateless persons was largely a rural problem.

The cases usually involved those without birth certificates, those with birth certificates but without MyKads, and late birth registrants.

“In the olden days, Sabahans from far-flung areas had to travel either to Kota Kinabalu or to Sandakan to attend such inquiries.

“This incurs massive costs, especially for those in rural areas, that some just give up on having their children registered,” he said.

Malanjum said the Sabah mobile court had sped up the process, saying that it had helped register up to 40,000 cases over the past 10 years.

There had also been various instances where Sabahans ineligible to obtain MyKads had been held by the Immigration Department and placed in temporary detention centres, along with illegal immigrants bound to be deported back to their country.

The problem of statelessness has also been challenging as it often involves mixed marriages among locals and foreigners, leaving the nationality of their offspring in question.

Malanjun said that a stateless case took between two and three months to resolve, with some taking up to six months.

“But I am pleased we are moving in the right direction and the plight of stateless persons is improving,” he said. – September 28, 2018.