Hasta La Creative!

Malaysia is a country of contrast, containing the most modern skyscrapers in cities, and a sedate countryside. Malaysia has a problem with stateless children, and issue that happens often in Malaysia because people don’t register the birth of their child in the country. Without a registration the children become stateless, and are denied access to health care, schooling and so on. Using peoples signatures and LED lights that reacted to the signing, an exhibition brought the dark spots to light, displaying actual stateless children’s faces. While the act of signing setting the kids free reminded me a little of the Human Rights Watch sign them out of jail installation, this uses a far more complicated idea and has a website to go with it, so there’s a sharing aspect.

“The ultimate goal of this campaign is to reduce the number of stateless children in Malaysia, and to raise awareness on the need for birth registration. Parents need to be aware that children may risk becoming stateless if they are not registered at birth,” said Sharmila Sekaran, President of Voice of the Children, who gave the welcome address at the launch.

“We estimate that there are between 50,000 to 150,000 unregistered children in Malaysia, and this number will continue to grow if nothing is done about it. We hope to continue being able to work
closely with the government to solve this issue, and to give these young ones a future they can look forward to,” she adds.

Dr. Hartini Zainudin, Vice President of Voice of the Children hopes her children will also be brought to light via the campaign. She fears for her adopted daughter who is not a citizen of any country and is deemed stateless. “The fight to give stateless children a country to call home resonates strongly with me, not just as a child activist, but particularly as a mother. Although my daughter has a birth certificate, she is still not a citizen of Malaysia,” explains Zainudin.

One of my favourite ads from Malaysia is Tan Hong Ming is in love , showing that kids don’t know racism like adults do.