Law

1. Citizenship Law

a. Jus Sanguinis Provisions

The citizenship laws of Brunei Darussalam (Brunei), stipulated by the Brunei Nationality Act, operate largely through jus sanguinis structure and contain both racial and gender discriminatory provisions. Persons born in Brunei who “are commonly accepted as belonging to one of seven ‘indigenous groups of the Malay race’” are automatically considered citizens of Brunei if their father or both parents are citizens of Brunei. Further, children born outside of Brunei to a father who was born in Brunei and belonged to one of the seven Indigenous groups are considered citizens. Children who have both a father and mother born in Brunei who are members of one of an additional 15 ethnic groups ‘considered to be Indigenous’ to Brunei are considered citizens of Brunei whether they were born in or outside of the country. There is no definition of a stateless person or explicit mentioning of a stateless person in the citizenship legislation of Brunei.

b. Naturalized Citizenship

A naturalization process is available to non-citizens in Brunei. In order to be eligible, one must have resided in Brunei for at least twenty of the twenty five years prior to application as well as continuously for the two years immediately prior to the application, among other requirements. Any time in which a person is residing illegally in Brunei will not count towards their years of residence. Stateless persons may make an application for citizenship if they were born in the country and have been resident for at least twelve of the last fifteen years and pass a test of Malay culture and language. However, stateless persons in Brunei have reported waiting five to ten years after passing the culture and language test without gaining citizenship. An ethnic Chinese applicant stated that they waited 12 years after passing the citizenship test to receive citizenship.

c. Dual Citizenship

Dual citizenship is not recognized in Brunei as a citizen who voluntarily acquires citizenship of another state will “cease to have” Brunei citizenship. If a woman who is a Brunei citizen acquires a foreign nationality through marriage, she will cease to have Brunei citizenship. There exists no provision stipulating the same for Brunei citizen men.

2. Treaty Ratification Status

Brunei has notably low rates of treaty ratification, being one of the two countries in Southeast Asia to be party to two or fewer of the relevant treaties. The two relevant treaties ratified by Brunei are the CRC and CEDAW. The country has yet to ratify the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the ICCPR, ICESCR, and ICERD.

While a party to CEDAW, Brunei maintains reservation to Article 9(2) of the convention which provides women with equal rights regarding the nationality of their children. The CEDAW Committee has called on Brunei to withdraw its reservation and to amend the citizenship laws of Brunei to provide women the equal right to transfer their nationality to their children.

In 2016, the CRC Committee in its concluding observations to Brunei expressed concerns over the persistence of discrimination against certain groups of children, including stateless children. The Committee also pinpointed the issue of access to citizenship for children born to Bruneian women married to foreign nationals who can currently only access citizenship by application, while children of Bruneian fathers in the same situation are granted automatic citizenship. Echoing the CEDAW Committee’s concluding observations, the CRC Committee also recommended that Brunei amend the Brunei Nationality Act to ensure Bruneian women equal rights to confer citizenship to their children as well as “strengthen measures to naturalize stateless children”. Further, the CRC Committee identified that there is a lack of disaggregated data available for stateless persons in Brunei, including stateless children. The Committee encouraged Brunei to ensure universal birth registration, especially for stateless families and children, to be able to access basic rights. Regarding birth registration, the Committee also expressed its concern over the “considerable disparities in birth registration in rural and urban areas, and that children in migration circumstances, including irregular migration, as well as children in Kampong Ayer (the “water village”), are not always registered at birth”. As a party to the CRC, Brunei has committed to ensuring that every birth is registered immediately as well as that every child has the right to acquire a nationality.

It was noted in a Joint Submission of Brunei’s UPR in 2014 that there is limited engagement by civil society on statelessness in Brunei, which could be attributed to “limitations on the right to freedom of information, opinion and expression”.

Status of Accession of International Human Rights Treaties in Southeast Asia

Country	Stateless 1	Stateless 2	Refugee	ICCPR	ICESCR	ICERD	CRC	CEDAW
Brunei Darussalam

Signifies that the country is a party to the convention

Stateless 1 – 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons

Signifies that the country is not a party to the convention

Stateless 2 – 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness

Population

1. Reported Stateless Persons

Brunei reported 20,863 stateless persons to UNHCR in 2022. This is a sizable portion of the population, which was 455,400 persons as of 2022. This reported figure has remained at a similar level for the last 10 years since the 2011 Brunei census reported 20,500 stateless persons in the country. The reported population is likely to only include stateless persons who are regularized and have a certificate of identity. International stakeholders noted with concern in a joint UPR submission over the lack of transparency on how the reported population data was acquired, making it difficult to monitor how the situation of statelessness in the country is evolving. In particular, the US Department of State reported in its 2012 Human Rights Report for Brunei that there could be as many as 150,000 stateless persons in Brunei, whereas the Brunei government again reported only around 20,000 persons. The 2022 Human Rights Report also notes that recent statistics on the stateless population in Brunei are unreliable. There is also no available data on stateless persons without formalized residency.

According to the US Department of State’s 2021 Human Rights Report for Brunei, most stateless persons in Brunei were born in the country from families of Chinese heritage who have resided in Brunei for multiple generations and have permanent residence in Brunei. As of 2014, only half of the ethnic Chinese population in Brunei had acquired Brunei citizenship. Barriers to their access to citizenship include being excluded from the eligible ethnicities for citizenship in legislation, not being able to provide evidence of legal residence, and inability to pass the Malay language test.

Brunei reported 20,863 stateless persons to UNHCR in 2022. This is a sizable portion of the population, which was 455,400 persons as of 2022.

2. Persons at Risk of Statelessness

Children of a Brunei citizen mother and non-citizen father are at risk of statelessness due to gender discriminatory provisions which limit women’s ability to confer nationality to their children on the same basis as men. Also at risk are indigenous groups which experience significant barriers to birth registration, including the Dusun and Iban populations. The US Department of State also identified the foreign wives of citizens as persons at risk of statelessness. Between 2017 and 2021, 1,975 stateless persons gained citizenship, with most of this group being foreign wives, not ethnically Chinese persons.

Reported stateless persons to the UNHCR

Country	2019 (year start)	2020 (year end)	2021 (year end)	2022 (year end)
Brunei Darussalam	20,863	20,863	20,863	20,863

Source: UNHCR, Global Trends: Forced Displacement from 2019-2022.

Causes of Statelessness

1. Discriminatory Nationality Laws

As noted above Brunei’s citizenship laws contain both racially and gender discriminatory provisions, with Malay ethnicity and citizenship being deeply entwined. The limitation of nationality to certain prescribed ethnic groups, or “indigenous groups of the Malay race” is the primary cause of statelessness in Brunei.

Barriers to their access to citizenship include being excluded from the eligible ethnicities for citizenship in legislation, not being able to provide evidence of legal residence, and inability to pass the Malay language test.As noted above Brunei’s citizenship laws contain both racially and gender discriminatory provisions, with Malay ethnicity and citizenship being deeply entwined.

The largest registered stateless group in the country is persons of Chinese heritage who are not considered one of the prescribed groups. Most of the affected population hold regularised permanent residence in Brunei and hold identity certificates that provide rights to travel, access education and health care. However, their permanent resident status does not allow them to hold passports, restricts freedom of movement, excludes them from accessing fully subsidized healthcare or higher education, and prohibits them from owning property, land or a business, among other restrictions. Despite the regularised status persons are still denied citizenship and UNHCR has called on Brunei to amend the racially discriminatory provisions with retrospective effect.

Gender discriminatory provisions further fundamentally limit a female citizen of Brunei to confer nationality to her children, essentially terming them stateless, requiring a registration process to be undertaken for citizenship to be recognised (whereas children born to male citizens receive automatic citizenship). Women are also limited in their ability to confer nationality onto foreign husbands (while male citizens of Brunei can pass on nationality to foreign wives).

2. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness

The citizenship legislation of Brunei does not provide any right to nationality for foundling children or children born to stateless parents. It also does not provide any safeguards to children whose nationality will be passed by their mothers, where albeit such children will be provided with identity documents and will go through an application process, but are yet considered stateless.

3. Citizenship Stripping

Brunei citizenship may be lost if the citizen resides outside of Brunei for five continuous years without providing satisfactory proof of maintaining a “substantial connection with Brunei”. Citizenship may only be deprived of citizens by registration or naturalization. Notably, if a person who has gained citizenship by registration or naturalization acts or speaks in a way is “disloyal or disaffected towards His Majesty the Sultan”, they will be stripped of Brunei citizenship. However, an individual shall not be stripped of their citizenship according to the law if such would lead to the individual being stateless.

4. Administrative Barriers

Stateless persons in Brunei can seek citizenship through naturalization where certain residence standards are met and a Malay language and cultural test is passed. However, there are reports that persons who have met the requirements and passed the relevant tests still have not been granted citizenship 5 to 10 years after completing the requirements, pointing at administrative barriers to accessing citizenship through this process.

Universal birth registration is required for all children born in the territory of Brunei, as stipulated by the Birth and Deaths Registration Act (2013). Brunei has reported a 100% birth registration rate to UNICEF as of 2020. Despite this, indigenous groups, including the Dusun and Iban, experience significant barriers to birth registration, placing them at risk of statelessness. Residing mostly in rural areas of Brunei, access to registration is low, despite the government’s stated efforts to improve access.

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