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The government has asked the UN refugee agency UNHCR to temporarily stop registering new refugees as it implements its own system, known as the Dokumen Pendaftaran Pelarian (DPP). Putrajaya says the move will allow Malaysia to better verify identities and manage refugee data. However, CSOs have raised concerns over what this means for people seeking protection, particularly as Malaysia prepares to repatriate thousands of Myanmar nationals despite continued reports of conflict and human rights abuses in the country. When people arrive at our borders seeking safety, what responsibilities do we have as a country? And how should those responsibilities be balanced with national interests? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Joanne Chua, Executive Director of Asylum Access Malaysia.
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00:10Hello 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. The
00:19government has asked the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, to temporarily stop registering new
00:26refugees. This as it implements its own system known as the Document Pendaftaran Pelarian or DPP.
00:33Putrajaya says that this move will allow Malaysia to better verify identities and manage refugee data.
00:40However, rights groups have raised concerns over what this means for people seeking protection,
00:46particularly as Malaysia prepares to repatriate thousands of Myanmar nationals despite continued
00:53reports of conflict and human rights abuses in the country. So when people arrive at our borders
01:01seeking safety, what responsibilities do we have as a country, as a society? And how should these
01:07responsibilities be then balanced with national interests? Well, joining me on the show to discuss
01:14this further is Joanne Chua, who is the Executive Director of Asylum Access Malaysia. Joanne,
01:19thank you so much for joining us today. The government has launched, if I understand correctly,
01:24the government launched the document Pendaftaran Pelarian back in January. So there's been a few
01:30months that this has been in our consciousness. So what do we know so much about the DPP at the
01:38moment?
01:39What do you understand about the rationale behind it and how it's being implemented?
01:45So the DPP is essentially a malicious move towards building its own national system for registering
01:52refugees, rather than relying on UNHCR, which has run refugee registration in the country for decades.
01:59It was launched earlier this year, like you said, in January of 2026. And the rationale,
02:04as the government has explained it, is really about sovereignty, wanting full ownership over refugee data
02:12and process rather than depending on a UN agency's records that sits outside their direct control.
02:20So as far as we know right now, the DPP is still in its early stages. It's been rolled out
02:25inside
02:26immigration detention centers, which is phase one. So as far as we know, it hasn't yet reached the
02:33majority of the refugee population who actually live in the community, not in detention. So the full
02:40eligibility criteria, the process for how someone gets assessed and the timeline for extending this
02:46beyond the detention centers haven't been publicly published yet. That's actually one of the things
02:53we're watching most closely because a system like this really needs those details to be clear for it to work
03:00fairly. So in short, it's a reasonable direction in principle and one that we've engaged with constructively,
03:06including briefing Parliament's special select committee on it. But it is still very much a work in progress.
03:14And a lot of the important operational detail is yet to be defined publicly.
03:19Okay. What kind of operational details are you particularly curious about? I guess I'm wondering,
03:25in terms of selecting and identifying and seeing who qualifies or requires protection, how do we know
03:33that this system or the DPP will not wrongly exclude people who actually need protection? What safeguards
03:42need to be put in place? So you've really hit the nail on the head. That is really the crux
03:47of the whole
03:48issue. Determining whether someone is a genuine refugee isn't like checking a passport or verifying an ID.
03:56It requires assessing their actual fear of persecution, understanding the conditions in the country they fled,
04:03and hearing about very deeply traumatic experiences. That is a very specialized skill that takes real
04:11training. And it's essentially what UNHCR protection officers have done for decades. So the first safeguard
04:17is who is actually making that assessment under the DPP and are they trained in refugee protection
04:24specifically, not just general immigration or enforcement work. Those are very different skill sets
04:30and conflating them does risk missing genuine cases. Secondly, the eligibility criteria needs to be
04:39published and made clear. So right now they aren't and that creates uncertainty for everyone, including
04:46the officers who are applying that system now day to day. So vague or undefined criteria almost always lead to
04:53inconsistent outcomes. Thirdly, I think there needs to be some kind of appeal or review mechanism.
05:01No assessment process anywhere in the world gets every decision right the first time around. If someone is wrongly assessed,
05:09there has to be a path to correct that because the consequence of getting it wrong here isn't just an
05:16administrative error. It can mean someone being sent back into serious danger or even death. And just one
05:24short point. So one point that is often easy to overlook is this. Refugees often arrive without any documents
05:32at all and that's simply the nature of fleeing persecution. You don't usually have time to gather paperwork when
05:39your life is at risk. So the system really needs to be built to recognize that reality as normal and
05:46not
05:46treat a lack of documents as a reason for suspicion or exclusion.
05:51And that's precisely my concern about the asylum seekers who are arriving in Malaysia today as the UNHCR has
06:02been temporarily stopped from registering new refugees and asylum seekers. What does that mean for them,
06:10for the people in practical terms when this process is still being essentially rolled out?
06:16So honestly, right now it means real uncertainty and security risk. UNHCR registration has been the only pathway
06:26available to people outside detention and that's currently paused while the DPP is being built up.
06:32But the DPP hasn't been extended to people in the community yet. It's still confined to the
06:37detention centers as far as we know. So someone arriving in Malaysia today fleeing violence or
06:44persecution doesn't have any alternative route to being registered or documented at all.
06:50And as we have discussed, documentation isn't just paperwork. It has very real practical effects on
06:57someone's daily life and safety. It's what allows a registered person to access government healthcare
07:04at a reduced rate instead of the full foreigner fee. So this is not the local rate which I think
07:09a lot of
07:09us are mistaking it for. It's a very high fee. It's a fee anytime between 24 to 100 times the
07:15local fee,
07:16but they get a reduced rate on this if you have a CARB. And for many families, it's really the
07:22difference
07:22between getting treatment or not. It offers also some limited protection against arrest and detention
07:30and it keeps families together. So we do see often cases where some families are registered and others
07:38are still waiting. But that gap means that a parent or a child or a sibling can end up detained
07:44or deported
07:44while the rest of the family is protected here. So without any documentation, someone is essentially
07:53invisible to the very system that is meant to protect them and exactly the moment when they need
07:59that protection most. So this isn't slowing down while the transition happens. You know, immigration
08:07enforcement is actually escalating in parallel. So we do think there's a real and immediate gap here that
08:14needs some sort of bridging solution, even a simple one, while the DPP is still being rolled out properly.
08:24Joanne, you know, we've been observing there's been so much growing hostility towards refugees,
08:30Rohingya refugees specifically. How much do you think public perceptions are influencing refugee policy,
08:39influencing these immigration, the escalation of immigration enforcement? I'm just wondering,
08:47there are real consequences to this narrative that we're seeing online? And in your work, what are you
08:54observing in real life? So at this point, I think it's fair to say that there's some relationship between the
09:01two,
09:01even if it's hard to draw a clean direct line. When public sentiment toward a particular group becomes more hostile,
09:10and we have seen a real rise in anti-refugee sentiment online over the past couple of months, past year,
09:16it tends to create more political space for policy to move in a stricter, more enforcement-focused direction.
09:25And, you know, what we see is that the reverse is also true. Policy language that leans heavily on enforcement,
09:32even when it's meant purely administratively, can really end up reinforcing a public narrative that
09:38refugees are a threat to be managed, rather than people who need protection. So it can become something of a
09:44cycle,
09:45feeding itself in both directions. And, you know, you mentioned the real consequences. So the real consequences
09:52plays out on the ground in people's daily lives, right? So the Rohingya refugees in particular,
09:59many of whom are survivors of some of the most widely documented and severe persecution in the world,
10:05they end up facing harassment here. Exclusion, laid on top of what they've already survived and fled.
10:12We hear this directly from the communities that we work with, people who are now afraid to send their
10:18children to schools, schools that are being closed down. They're afraid to seek medical care, afraid
10:24to go to work. They're afraid simply because of how they're being talked about publicly. And there is
10:30also a quieter consequence, which is that this kind of hostility can make it harder for genuinely good
10:38policy to get made. Because decisions start being shaped by public pressure and perception,
10:45rather than by what actually keeps people safe and keeps the system functioning fairly. So what would
10:52really help, and this is something we think is a shared responsibility across government, media and
10:58organisations like ours, is a more accurate public information about who refugees actually are,
11:05why they're here and what their presence does and doesn't mean for Malaysians.
11:10Okay, can I then ask you to maybe answer that question for how would you respond to those who say,
11:17or who have believed into that narrative of national security and enforcement and refugees are a threat
11:25and they're not, they actually, when they actually need protection. What do you say to the people who
11:30think Malaysia has been too permissive in our refugee policy?
11:35So I think it's generally a misconception that this is a zero-sum game, right? If you're helping
11:43refugees, we're not helping our people. But that's really not the situation here. The refugees actually
11:48get little to none public subsidies at all. You know, you talk about my booty, you talk about the
11:56petrol subsidy, you talk about the grocery subsidies, you talk about public schools,
12:00public healthcare. The refugees don't get any of that. They're not using any of Malaysian taxpayers'
12:05monies at all. They're not getting shelter. So I think that's really a misconception that we need
12:11to debunk, that they take up public resources. They don't. They have, yes, limited access to public
12:17healthcare, but they pay mostly a foreigner rate on that. It's reduced if you have the card, but it's so
12:23much higher than the Malaysian rate. It's not subsidized.
12:27Well, so now let's look ahead. I mean, what would a successful document pendaftaran pelarian
12:34system look like? What is Asylum Access Malaysia calling for in terms of this framework as it's
12:43being rolled out now? So for us, success looks like a system that is both fully government-owned,
12:50but it's also genuinely protection-centric. And I really want to stress that those two things
12:56aren't in conflict. A system can absolutely be sovereign, Malaysian-led, and still built around
13:01protecting the people that it's registering. So practically, that means a few concrete things.
13:07So firstly, there is currently a structural conflict within the DPP process that is enforcement versus
13:14protection. So the immigration department now currently acts as both immigration enforcement
13:20authority and the status determination body. So this is a clear conflict of interest. International
13:28standards require institutional separation between enforcement and protection functions. As it stands,
13:34it is unclear whether the DPP process includes firewalls to manage this conflict or what appeal
13:41review mechanisms exist for rejected claims. So at the very least, there should be an independent
13:47appeals body separate from the immigration department, and this would really be essential
13:52to ensure fair outcomes. Secondly, we really need a clear published eligibility criteria so that everyone,
14:01refugees, enforcement officers, civil society, so that we know exactly what the rules are. Thirdly,
14:08the DPP must ensure meaningful access to our legal advice and representation. This can be through legal
14:14aid or partnerships with the Malaysian Bar or civil society legal providers like us. We already provide
14:21this service for asylum seekers undergoing the refugee status determination process with UNHCR, and we can do this
14:28for the DPP process as well. So lastly, I think what we really want is a transition that doesn't leave
14:34gaps,
14:35meaning that ideally UNHCR and the government should be working together during this handover period rather
14:42than one system stopping abruptly before the other is actually ready to take over its function.
14:47We also hope to see an ongoing role for organisations like ours and for UNHCR's
14:54protection expertise more broadly, even as the government is taking fuller ownership of the overall
15:00process. Not because the government needs oversight, but because that combined expertise is what makes
15:06makes a system like this work well in practice. Wonderful. Joanne, thank you so much for being on the
15:11show with me. I appreciate your time. Joanne Chua from Asylum Access Malaysia there. We're going to take a
15:16quick break here of episode of this. We'll be back with more. Stay tuned.
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