- 6 months ago
- #considerthis
- #worldrefugeeday2025
Globally, over 120 million people are forcibly displaced—that’s one in 67 individuals worldwide. This is the highest number ever recorded. Malaysia hosts close to 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers, all of whom remain in legal limbo because: they cannot work legally, have no formal access to education or healthcare, and live under constant risk of arrest or exploitation. On #ConsiderThis to mark #WorldRefugeeDay2025 Melisa Idris speaks with Hafsar Tameesuddin, Co-Secretary General of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network. APRRN is the only region-wide network of refugee-led initiatives in the Asia Pacific, working with and for refugees. Hafsar is a human rights defender and refugee rights activist with lived experience of statelessness, displacement, and forced migration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show
00:15where we want you to consider and reconsider what you know of the news of the day. Now
00:19this World Refugee Day, let's pause to recognize a staggering truth. Globally, over 120 million
00:27people are forcibly displaced. That's one in every 67 individuals worldwide. This is the
00:33highest number ever recorded. Now here at home in Malaysia, there are close to 200,000 refugees
00:41and asylum seekers that we host, all of whom remain in legal limbo because they cannot work
00:46legally, they have no formal access to education or to healthcare, and they live under the constant
00:52risk of arrest or exploitation. So joining me on the show today to discuss this is someone
01:00who has lived experience of statelessness and displacement. Joining me is Hafsa Tamisuddin,
01:07who is the Co-Secretary General of the Asia-Pacific Refugee Rights Network. APRN is the only region-wide
01:16network of refugee-led initiatives in the Asia-Pacific, and they're working with and for refugees.
01:22Hafsa, thank you so much for being on the show with me, Hafsa. I appreciate your time.
01:26You bring all this kind of both professional experience as well as lived reality, your deeply
01:34personal insights into refugee advocacy, and I wanted to begin there if I may. Can you share a little bit
01:39about how your lived experience has shaped your approach to refugee rights advocacy?
01:46So it's just very different than how others will approach refugee issue from the theoretical
01:54lens and then framework lens and policy lens without actually living in it. So when you actually live
01:59in it, you just know all the difficulties and challenges that you have to go through because
02:05of some policy and legislation well-not-recognized convention or refugee rights or any human rights.
02:11It's not theoretical, right? No, no. It's just, I mean, on top of theoretical,
02:14if you have lived experience, it's so real and it is really informing the advocacy and the work that
02:19you do. And also along the way, as a refugee, and if you live under all these different operations
02:26and injustice, you then slowly also learn a lot of wisdom. If you don't choose not to be bitter about
02:32it, you can, people will inevitably become very bitter and frustrated and angry. Why me? What did I do?
02:39But if you then overcame and on top of it, okay, I am going to choose to use all this struggle and
02:46challenges as my wisdom and knowledge that then actually put you in a very unique position to see
02:51the issues from a different lens, human rights lens, human trend lens and human sense. That is very unique.
02:57Yeah. Okay. So it has shaped the way, because you know how policies, how kind of public sentiment
03:05impacts people who have been displaced. Nobody asks to be a refugee. Yes. Talk to me about a little
03:12bit of your story. So right now you've resettled in New Zealand. Yes. Yes. What has that transition
03:19meant for you, both personally and in terms of your work and advocacy, your, how that journey has shaped
03:26the way you speak about refugee rights? They're very distinct. The first thing is your mental health,
03:34because when I live in my entire life, either inside Myanmar or in Malaysia, so as you mentioned,
03:39I was born as a stateless person since birth. So you are nobody. You don't have any identity and documents.
03:43So there was a lot of discrimination and fear of insecurity. You don't know what's going to happen,
03:49who is going to harm you at any point of your life. So when I become a refugee in Malaysia,
03:53it's the same, right? So there was insecurity and there was no protection. Anything can happen.
03:58And even if I did a lot of advocacy in Malaysia, I dare not go very public because my family was still in
04:05Myanmar. So the government of Myanmar tend to target the family of the activists and advocate if they
04:11cannot get the activists themselves. And when I do advocacy inside Myanmar, it's also something,
04:17sometimes you're calling on different governments, including Malaysia. Can you do this A, B, C, D?
04:21So it is risk to you. So I could not do all of that at all. But the first relief that I felt when I
04:27get to New Zealand said, okay, fine, now I can breathe. And there was safety, sense of security,
04:32sense of belonging. And then I can do my advocacy even louder, more open. And that has opened me
04:37a lot of opportunity to pursue my higher education. And I started my social work degree straight away
04:42in New Zealand. For just four years of degree, I completed. Now I'm doing my master in public policy
04:48and employment and all that. Oh, congratulations. And I think we take it for granted that, you know,
04:54we can pursue our passions through education. Yeah. But as a stateless person, that's not a right or
05:01privilege that's been afforded to you. Are you no longer, is the concern for your family in Myanmar,
05:07has that been resolved? Oh, they have finally came and reunited with me now in New Zealand,
05:12one year and a half ago. So it's even given me more opportunity. That is a bigger sense of relief
05:17now for you as well. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Can I just push you or get you to explain a little bit about
05:22being in a rights protective environment like in New Zealand, and how that maybe has changed the way you
05:30see what refugee protections are like elsewhere, particularly in the Southeast Asian region?
05:36That is very different things, right? So when countries do not sign 951, there is a very big
05:41excuse of ignoring all the human rights violations that take place in Southeast Asia region,
05:48versus the country like New Zealand, who have signed 951 Convention, they can't because they are,
05:53you know, bound by these treaties and binding agreements, international human rights obligations. So
05:58there is limit to how much of the can go they cannot go. So in that sense, people are protected,
06:04even for example, somebody go to New Zealand without getting resettled, some people who have
06:10passport can go, and then decided I'm seeking asylum in this country. And then what they do is they
06:15give up the passport there at the airport, and then they submit their asylum claim. From that day on what?
06:21They can get paid for the social welfare for their house, food, and then they have access to some
06:27level of education. I mean, it's not the best life. There are so many things that they experience,
06:31but compared to refugees here in this part of the world, look at the difference. So in this scenario,
06:37they are not sure whether these people are going to be accepted as an asylum seekers or where their
06:43claim will be approved or not, even in that state. It's just submitting the paper.
06:48So even while you are still in that kind of limbo, you still get all the protections?
06:54You have access to legal lawyer for 20 hours, human rights lawyer for refugee lawyer. It's free.
06:59The government will pay for you. And then this basic human right for living, shelter, and food,
07:05and the money that you get weekly payment and access to medical, a little bit of healthcare. So it's a lot
07:10better than the refugees here, right? There is a certain dignity that is afforded to refugees and
07:18asylum seekers. Can we explore that? What that's like? Because statelessness has often been described
07:25as a silent crisis. Nobody talks about it. You don't know what the impacts are because stateless people
07:32often don't have a voice. Talk to me about being stateless and the impact of it to the people who don't
07:39understand what it's like. How does being stateless and all the issues that come with it compound
07:48the vulnerabilities of being a refugee? Yes, it's a very dangerous thing. And when all the refugees
07:54are labeled under one bigger macro title, like they call everybody refugee. So under the refugee,
08:00there are people who were stateless and becoming refugee. And then there were refugees at some point
08:06of their lives, something happened, a war beginning five years ago, they suddenly become refugee.
08:10It means before then, they enjoyed citizenship, right? They were a citizen of a country. A country,
08:15and they had the right to education, they had the right to employment, but on the contrary,
08:19when you were stateless, for my case, or many others. You were born stateless. Yes, I was born as a
08:23stateless person. So you don't exist in the system. So people are deprived from higher level of education,
08:30legal protection, even within their own countries, since the day they were born all along the way.
08:35So their level of deprivation from basic human rights is the next level compared to those others
08:41who might have enjoyed their human rights before all this, something comes up in their life.
08:45That causes them to become air displaced. So it is a very distinction. So then because of that
08:51root cause of being stateless, and you live in that operation for a long time as the stateless,
08:56and then you came out of the country, and then you then fall into the category of asylum seekers and
09:00refugee with many other who were not stateless before. And then the system and the refugee response
09:06for everybody is the same, right? That framework and that response doesn't work for some stateless
09:11people because they are yet to explore themselves. They are yet to find for access to education.
09:16They are yet to understand the world because the way how we live in that country is you are not allowed
09:21to travel from one village to another village overnight. You need a travel document for that
09:26travel permit from the government within your own state, within your own towns, from one town to
09:31another. So that is the next level of oppression, right? So you never hold an ID and no higher education.
09:36Even if you go to uni, they will not, even if they give you a certificate, they will not recognize
09:41and then they will not invite you for the graduation. Nobody will employ you because you are stateless.
09:45So it is the next level. So we should not take it lightly for the stateless and refugee.
09:50They have different needs. They require different level of support. The refugee response framework needs
09:57to be incorporated, the needs for the stateless people. Can I ask you what that needs to be incorporated?
10:02I mean, Malaysia doesn't even have a national refugee response framework. One has been promised for the
10:09longest time. But if you were, as you say, it should be also inclusive for stateless persons, what should it include?
10:18So for example, there are some universities that will say if you are a refugee, if you have a passport,
10:24you can still study. Stateless people don't have a passport. So you need to remove that barrier of
10:30stateless people to be included in the access to education. And then for many places where you will need
10:36documentation, stateless people do not have it. So all refugees here, regardless of your status,
10:41whether you are stateless or refugee, have mandated refugee card. You just say everybody with your
10:45card, come along. And you just say everybody with a sign, instead of putting a passport and another
10:49document, that we don't have. Sometimes if people ask for like, okay, if you don't have an ID, do you
10:54have a family, concerns, whatever, we don't have it. People are running away from war in life. So that
11:00excessive requirement of documentation is a big barrier. Also understanding is that because of the lack of all
11:06documentation in their life, when we get resettled, there's also another need, right? So the level
11:12of process and time, lengthy time, that people have to go through to become a citizen should be
11:17considered for stateless people in a different category because they never had any document.
11:22The citizenship that you are going to give them will be the only document in their life and the only
11:26passport. So that is also difficult in many ways. Well, is there help for, and I'm just thinking,
11:34even though there, you know, there are gaps in the refugee response that maybe exclude stateless
11:40persons, how are, who fills in the gaps? Are there civil society NGOs that currently help stateless
11:47people or is that still missing completely? It is. There are some civil society, but I don't,
11:52I did not see heavily in Asia and Pacific region in the past. It was more Eurocentric. That started from
11:58Europe. Now expanding to here. I mean, the first one good example was in 2014, February, they did the
12:04World Statelessness Conference, the second one in Kuala Lumpur, which was a great thing. Well, people
12:09are on the ground, go there. Do not call us to Netherlands or Geneva. So that happened. So there
12:13is some shift happening. In the past, there wasn't much, but still the kind of changes that actually
12:20made by the civil society on the stateless people are still a lot more to be done. So what about your
12:25organization? So, um, APRON or Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, what are you trying to address?
12:32What gaps are you trying to make sure that, um, your organization fills or seeks to address? So what
12:38we do is a lot of advocacy, right? Majority of it is. When we do advocacy, we try not to be exclusive
12:43of statelessness. And then when we advocate for Myanmar refugee and including Rohingya, we are also
12:48advocating for the stateless people. And when we do a press release, when we meet with the government
12:54people on permanent mission in different parts of the world, or if we go to Geneva for stakeholder
12:58meeting, we definitely highlight there is the different needs for the stateless community plus
13:04refugee and the refugees. So in our advocacy, we always incorporate that elements of, you know,
13:10non-inclusive for LGBTQ plus, for example, there was another minority on top of being refugee
13:15and then a minority because of their statelessness status. So we try to be as inclusive as possible.
13:21Do you think there is a level of, the level of awareness has increased? Because you're absolutely
13:27right. Sometimes you put this blanket cover of refugee for anyone who is forcibly displaced without
13:33realizing the intersectionalities of each individual's circumstances. Do you think that's been increased,
13:41that level of awareness? Or are people still saying or looking at refugees as this one homogenous
13:47group of people? Well, compared to 15 years ago. You've been doing this for a while, haven't you?
13:5315 or 20 years ago. It has moved. It has. But there was a lot more to be done. And then there was also
14:00coming from the, how do I call it, the lack of curiosity from the public and then from the people.
14:06Because you just, some people just do it for the sake of job, right? What do you mean lack of curiosity?
14:11Lack of curiosity is wanting to know, willing to know more. Okay, now we're talking about refugees. What
14:15are the diversity within the refugee community? What are the intersectionality within the refugee
14:21communities, right? So digging deeper that people do not know. There was ignorance.
14:27So in Myanmar, there are many different ethnic groups that require different types of approaches.
14:34Yes. Because after the coup, many people escaped from Myanmar. Then they were like,
14:37oh, all Myanmar refugees. But then the cases of Rohingya, the operation began, I don't know,
14:42seven decades ago, nobody knows. And then if you put everyone under the same label of all refugees from
14:48Myanmar, it is definitely going to be comprehensive, need-based and practical response. You need a different
14:54response for them. So I think in a lot of ways, there is a lot of curiosity need to be there and
14:59education and forget about refugees and stateless. Even between refugee and migrants in this country,
15:04for example, everybody think everyone is migrants. And I'm like, no. And then that ignorance comes
15:10because we think the issue of refugees and migrants are not our business. Our life is at peace. We don't
15:15need to talk about it. It's none of our business. But the reality is whatever impact that refugees and
15:22migrants are going to have is also going to impact the wider society. And it's inevitable. Like,
15:28for example, we have this young generation and lost generation of younger people without access to
15:34education, refugees, and in different countries like Bangladesh, Thailand, and Malaysia. So these
15:39younger children have witnessed the massive atrocities in their life, lost their parents and a lot of
15:45harassment and oppression. They have so much anger and frustration and pain. If we don't give them a
15:50platform, the barriers, including Malaysia, we have signed CRC, right? Convention for the
15:55rights of the children. If we don't allow them to get to access to education, how are they going to
15:59cope with this pain and transform this pain into wisdom and then utilize it for the greater cause
16:05and contribute to the society? What is going to happen is that this lost generation, one day,
16:10they might feel like, I cannot cope with this pain anymore. And then that might even push them to
16:14become, to do something terrible. And they might think, no one is caring about us. We will take
16:20our future and in our own hand. And that might be something terrible. And then people will blame
16:24them. Look, these people are terrorists. And we never talk about what are all these contributing
16:30factors that push these younger people to this extreme, right? So it's our ignorance is going to
16:35affect and affecting our wider society. So we should never think about, oh, this group is not our business.
16:41This is our business. Well, I think it goes more than just that as well. So it's not just kind of
16:46the community saying, well, this isn't this or national saying, you know, this is not our,
16:53our community is not our problem. We shouldn't really care about them. It also goes regionally,
16:58right? Yeah. I mean, refugee issues are often seen as a national problem. You deal with this in your
17:04own country. It's not a regional problem. And we see that with ASEAN as well. A lot, a lot.
17:08Because you are kind of the Asia Pacific refugee rights network, you look at it from a regional
17:14basis. Do you see these countries operating in silos? And what would you like them rather to do?
17:20They do a lot. I mean, I travel also to Global North, right? So every time I go,
17:28Asia and Pacific refugee issue is close to my heart. And even if they're talking about other refugee crisis
17:33in that part of the world, I will always raise hand and talk about, may I know such and such,
17:37what kind of measure are you taking for the refugee and displacement issue in Asia and Pacific region?
17:42So their response will be, we have very limited resources and we have enough refugee crisis in
17:47this Global North. Our question to you, Hafsa, will be, what is ASEAN doing? And then I do not
17:53honestly have a very good answer for them. And, and again, also through my work and advocacy and my
18:00paid work, I travel to Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia and, you know, engage with different government.
18:06And one thing that I find it very fascinating is that there is a lack of communication. If we do
18:10analysis of this is what Malaysia is doing, Thailand is doing, really? Of course.
18:15Well, they don't know. No, no, no. And then I'm like,
18:17would you like APREN to coordinate a meeting between you guys? Oh, that would be good.
18:22That is one thing. And the other thing is, there is this forum called ASEAN dialogue on forced
18:28displacement. That has been conducted for now, it's almost 12 years now. So in that forum, they invite
18:35usually different government representatives, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh,
18:39all this. And then in their room, the people who come from those government representatives,
18:45their focus is to face the, how do you call it, to save the face. You know, you're like,
18:52you don't want your country's reputation to be affected. Oh, I see. So they are in the room.
18:57Why I know the first 11 of this forum, nobody with lived experience was sitting in the forum.
19:01Only on the 12th one, I was invited as the only one with lived experience in the forum, right?
19:07So the forum has government representatives, civil society reps and NGOs, no lived experience.
19:12So that's when I saw, okay, even before we discuss and talk about your regional refugee
19:17protection, you are already prepared and are in the defensive mode of defending your nation's
19:23reputation. And you are not willing to have an open and frank conversation. And how are you going to
19:29find solutions together? Thank you so much for bringing this up. And I'm glad that you touched
19:34on this because I know that you often speak about this, the need for that power shift, right? To move
19:40away from this tokenistic consultation to real, to listening to refugee voices, to stateless people's
19:48voices, having people with lived experience in the room, as you mentioned. How do you do that? What does it
19:55look like when we think about meaningful inclusion, not just in terms of on paper, but in real practice?
20:03So you can't just say, I've spoken to someone within the community tick. What does it look like in practice?
20:09That is also a real danger because sometimes, well, with my experience now, almost 20 years in this space,
20:15sometimes there are rooms that you sit and these are very bureaucratic and diplomatic. You need to know the
20:21language used in that certain audience and participants in that round table. If you just
20:26randomly pick up a refugee on the road who have never been engaged in the advocacy forum and put
20:30it on the table, they have a lot of things to say very emotionally, but you have not trained them,
20:34prepped them how to be doing intervention, engaging all of this. It's a very dangerous thing. You can just
20:40say a puppet on the table and come and say, really grateful for the first time having me on the table,
20:45and then not head and then leave. That is very not meaningful. So what you need is you need to bring
20:51and know the person who is good, in which forum, whose expertise is in line with what,
20:56and then bring them and give them, allow them to speak and contribute. And even when you do your
21:02language of UN policy and government language, ask that person with living space sitting there,
21:07all the policy decision that we are making, is it making sense to you and your community?
21:12Is it actually what is happening on the ground reality? Because one thing that I do intentionally
21:17when I come in the region is that you asked me just now, before we came to the interview,
21:22what were you meeting? Yes. I always dedicate time to meet with the community on the ground.
21:26Okay. I always dedicate, even if in an hour or two, it's my quality time. I sit with a refugee,
21:32just chat. It's about everything. What is the detention happening? What is the ground reality,
21:37medical access, people suffering, pain, everything. So that just gives me
21:40the analysis of what is actually happening, the trends from last month and this month.
21:44So last night I spent two hours with another refugee woman from African community, RLOs
21:49representative and speak. So that is so important. Only they know what is happening on the ground.
21:54I cannot. I'm sitting in New Zealand and I cannot claim that I understand how the refugees are living
22:00in the Bangladesh cross-border camp or in Malaysia. They are the one who knows what I can do. If I cannot
22:05bring them with me, I can bring their voices here and everywhere where I go. So that is meaningful things to do.
22:10And also you need to know who, where and what episodes they bring into the table.
22:14Can I ask you to maybe just share a little bit of your experience? So in 2016, Malaysia had this launch,
22:20this pilot project where they had Rohingya refugees work legally. And that project really struggled
22:28because officials said the take-up was low, so they deemed it a failure. Can you talk to me a little
22:35bit about how that was an example of the community themselves not being properly, meaningfully consulted?
22:41Yes, it is the main problem. Forget about the community on the grassroot level. We were already
22:46at Bookgate at that time. I told you, since I was in Malaysia, I'm already doing these walk-right things.
22:50It's not something new. So I never knew. I wasn't invited to the table. I don't know. And it's UN and
22:57government and they decided, oh, we're going to grab about, I don't know, 50, 40 Rohingya and send them to
23:02the plantation. So that was a big red flag. Because even, I said, again, even if you say it's refugees,
23:10they are equipped with different skill, different knowledge, and they have different needs. Without
23:14doing the skill mapping, and without doing the mapping of where the human labor needs are, without
23:19consulting with the communities, oh, you have the right to walk. Come, let me send you,
23:23isolate you to another 200 kilometers away from your family that you will never get to see.
23:27Of course, it's going to be a failure. It's a very dangerous, in the middle of the jungle,
23:31you don't see your family for two months and three months. You already have experienced very traumatic
23:36isolation and separation from your loved ones in the previous country before you come Malaysia.
23:41And then now you get a walk-right and then you are somewhere. So it's, of course, it's a failure.
23:46If they have consulted, have an open and honest dialogue with us, with the communities and CBOs,
23:52it would have been a success. Okay, so they cannot use that example for depriving people of the work
24:00to write, refugees of the work to write. Cannot, cannot. Because it was not, the project itself,
24:04it was not carried out well. Okay, in the last couple of minutes that we have left, Hafsa,
24:09what takeaway message would you like to give to our audience today, this World Refugee Day? What would you
24:15like the people at home who don't have your experience, your lived experience, to really
24:22understand and maybe implement their own lives? Yeah, I just want to say the rights of refugees
24:27is a human right. You know, even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 1 said,
24:33all human beings are born as an equal, regardless of who you are. So let's talk about your right to
24:39respect dignity and the right to exist and all of that. And we know that and we don't have to do
24:43that. And I believe Malaysian people are very kind and compassionate. Please step on your door of
24:48compassion. If you are so fearful of refugees, it's the resistance coming from the fear of unknown.
24:54Try to get to know your refugee neighbor. Have a cup of tea together and you might as well fall in love
24:58with your refugee neighbor. You know, do your little bit. And sometimes we look at so much on the macro level
25:04of change. Like, oh, the government passes legislation. Only then the change will come.
25:08But the change can come also in a smaller scale from the community level as well.
25:12You're opening the door for the refugee for your restaurant and a work opportunity or chit-chatting
25:18with your refugees and educating about your culture to your refugee neighbors. And you are also
25:22understanding them. It's going to open the door to social cohesion. And then for the government of
25:28Malaysia is that we understand and it's a big responsibility for Malaysia government hosting to
25:34nearly 200,000 is a big thing, even if you don't give them anything. But what we are really
25:38encouraging is that if there is something that is holding the Malaysia government back to start
25:44anything little pilot in terms of work right and stuff, please talk to us. We're here. We always,
25:49always want to talk and have a dialogue and understand what are the challenges from the
25:53government side that you cannot do. If there are any things that civil society can come in,
25:58and refugee community themselves can come in and be a part of the solution with you,
26:02so you don't have to share the responsibility alone. We will also hold the accountability
26:06with you and see how it goes for one year time from now.
26:09Hafsa, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to me today.
26:12It is absolutely my pleasure.
26:13What a joy it is talking to you. Thank you.
26:15Likewise. Thank you.
26:16That's all the time we have for you on this episode of Consider This.
26:19I am Melissa Idris signing off in the evening. Thank you so much for watching. Good night.
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