The Fostering Fee Accountability and Cost Tracking (FFACT) project (2022-2024) was a collaboration among civil society organizations (CSOs) including DIWA with a focus on collecting accurate data on recruitment costs in key migrant worker corridors, including into Malaysia. Through the project, migrant-serving organizations were trained in digital data collection with the aim of enabling stronger local advocacy in tackling forced labor issues in global supply chains. At the same time, through engagement at the local level, it became clear that other issues including child rights and wage theft were top of mind for migrant worker communities.
Nowhere is this more urgent than in Sabah, Malaysia, a region long reliant on low-wage migrant labor and home to a substantial stateless population, many of whom have entered the country through unregulated land and sea crossings from the Philippines and Indonesia. The porous border situation has prompted widespread statelessness among children in migrant families. While the right to a nationality is itself a human right, other child rights are likewise implicated including access to education and risks for child labor, forced labor and trafficking.
Issues of statelessness in Sabah have been widely documented; however, the costs and steps necessary to facilitate the legal documentation of Indonesian and Filipino children in Sabah remains an issue. According to research conducted by DIWA and Advocates for Non-Discrimination & Access to Knowledge (ANAK) , reducing financial barriers to birth registration is crucial to addressing the situation of undocumented children in Sabah to mitigate the risk of children and, subsequently, adults working in hazardous and exploitative situations. Please read more in our collaborative policy brief below.
