Stateless in Malaysia

Thanks to Bogordoug I have edited the URL's (I pasted them - I don't know how stray punctuation occurred. See comment 3 for information on how to access community center study

On Wednesday I visited with ERA Consumer Malaysia (Education & Research for Consumers Malaysia). To see how broadly consumerism is defined in Malaysia visit to its website http://www.eraconsumer.org/
(A factoid - one of the founders of the Consumers Association of Penang, the grandfather of Malaysian Consumer groups, was inspired by Ralph Nader.)

The first group I met (6 persons including 3 interns) were the fund raisers, who follow up on contacts made by the organization's president. Two people work on interpreting/analyzing international standards- we chatted about the ISO 9000 complaint cemetery in Sarawak (seemed as odd to them as to me) and ISO 9000 restaurants in London (I was told that it meant safety standards were adhered to, not that every item would taste the same each time & place). The consumer-oriented NGOs in Malaysia would provide an interesting research opportunity - plus their staff are smart, friendly, and accessible - alas it isn't where my research is headed.

I had a long conversation with the Program Director about two initiatives - Community Centers to Empower Indian Women in Malaysia and ERA Consumer's participation in a network to hold Asian governments accountable for their human rights. The latter group recently issued a report which can be found at http://www.forum-asia.org/in_the_news/pdfs/ANNI2008web.pdf Things may have loosened up here. A critical report has yet to result in adverse personal outcomes (detention). All conversations with NGOs end up with some sort of assessments of the political situation (past, current, and future).

First a bit of history and then on to statelessness. When rubber plantations are sold to developers the plantation workers (rubber tappers) are relocated to the equivalent of public housing (with the usual leakage so many end up as squatters rather in public housing). The outcomes are familiar to anyone with a little knowledge of public housing - break up of social networks/support systems, moving from an outdoor rural community to an apartment (one of the complaints mentioned was dealing with stairs), and all the expected social problems. Both the men and women lack marketable skills, but women were seen as the brunt of the expected social problems. (Plus one assumes that funding to empower women may have been more available.) BTW - the rubber tappers are Indians - and it was the Indian community that got the ball rolling by demonstrating against the present government

ERA Consumer, with funding from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Germany) and the European Union, opened up community centers to empower the women. The centre programs focus on enhancing the women's earning capacities, their physical and mental health, legal support, and family and community support. To enhance earning capacity aim participants learn skills to set up their own businesses, for example some women assembled small packages of peanuts to sell outside schools. (Of course, the women were taught to assemble safe/healthy packets). At the pictured community center I saw the crafts the women had made- small baskets woven from recycled magazines and decorative pillows. The next step is for the women to market their products - deciding how to market their products and marketing them is seen as an important part of empowering them. The focus is improving their lives and their communities step by step.

On to statelessness - in Malaysia every citizen has an identify card. It seems to be needed for most things, e.g., to take important examinations or get a job. The rubber plantations, as private property, were considered outside government control. Major events, such as births, were not registered. Now that people have moved from the plantations they need ID cards to work, but they can't because their births were not registered. So what to do? A person needs to find someone who witnesses his/her birth - a challenge when people may be 40 years old; plus the community has dispersed to who knows where. EraConsumer works with each individual on a case-by-case basis. The paper work, which is intimidating, may vary from state to state. I was incredulous throughout the entire conversation about the tappers and their new lives. The lack of an identify care was amazing as was the failure to develop "class action" to address the problem.

FYI - the European funding has ended by ERAConsumer has commitment to continuing the community centers for 15 more years. I found a publication describing the centers "Community Centres for the Empowerment of Indian Women in Malaysia" on the web - but no information on how to access it.