Introduction
UNHCR clarified that a refugee had been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.
Meanwhile, a stateless person is someone who is not a citizen of any country. Citizenship is the legal bond between a government and an individual and allows for certain political, economic, social and other rights of the individual, as well as the responsibilities of both government and citizen. A person can become stateless for various reasons, including sovereign, legal, technical or administrative decisions or oversights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights underlines that “Everyone has the right to a nationality.”
The true extent of statelessness is estimated to be much higher than estimated. Fewer than half of all countries in the world submit any data, and some of the most populous countries in the world with large suspected stateless populations don’t report on statelessness at all.
And the last one is asylum seeker clarified as to when people flee their own country and seek sanctuary in another country. They apply for asylum – the right to be recognized as refugees and receive legal protection and material assistance. An asylum seeker must demonstrate that his or her fear of persecution in his or her home country is well-founded.
Geneva Convention
The 1951 Geneva Convention is the principal international instrument of refugee law. The Convention spells out who a refugee is and the kind of legal protection, other assistance and social rights he or she should receive from the countries who have signed the document. The Convention also defines a refugee’s obligations to host governments and specific categories of people, such as war criminals, who do not qualify for refugee status. The Convention was limited to protecting mainly European refugees in the aftermath of World War II. Still, another document, the 1967 Protocol, expanded the scope of the Convention as the problem of displacement spread around the world.
As we know, Malaysia has not signed the Declaration of refugee 1951, according to previous research and study case, Amarjit Kaur in his study was clarified Malaysia had not ratified the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, nor has it established a system for protecting refugees. Additionally, it does not protect refoulement but generally does not deport such individuals recognized as persons of concern by UNHCR. While the state does not grant refugee status or asylum, it has cooperated with UNHCR. Generally, it does not impede other humanitarian organisations from assisting refugees (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) 2006).
The basis for UNHCR’s operations in Malaysia dates from the organisation’s work with Vietnamese refugees who fled to Malaysia in the 1970s and 1980s. It also comes from the 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA), an international agreement provided for the screening of these refugees for refugee status and their resettlement or repatriation. The first Vietnamese boat people landed on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia in May 1975. In the same year, the Malaysian government sought UNHCR help to deal with the Vietnamese boat people. According to USCRI, Malaysia was ‘perhaps the most resolute of the Southeast Asian first-asylum countries pursuing the repatriation of Vietnamese boat people’ (USCRI Country Report Malaysia, 1997:1; UNHCR 2000: ch. 4; Viviani 1984). Of the nearly 255,000 Vietnamese boat people who were given temporary asylum in Malaysia in eight camps, 248,410 were resettled in Western countries, while over 9,000 returned to Vietnam. The last camp was closed in 2001, five days before the end of the CPA (UNHCR Press Releases, 25 June 2001). The last Vietnamese boat refugee left Malaysia on 30 August 2005 (UNHCR Press Releases, 30 August 2005), signaling the end to an era of ‘voluntary’ Malaysian cooperation with the UNHCR.