The women Malaysia's legal system leaves behind

To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Asylum Access Malaysia urged Malaysia to step up efforts to protect the rights of all women and girls, including refugee girls, and to ensure they have meaningful access to justice and protection.

“This International Women’s Day, we are reminded that a society is measured by how it protects those most at risk,” said Joanne Chua, the executive director of Asylum Access Malaysia.

“Refugee women and girls in Malaysia deserve safety, dignity and access to justice. By taking practical steps to reduce barriers, Malaysia can demonstrate leadership rooted in compassion, fairness, and shared progress.”

This year, International Women’s Day fell amid escalating global conflict – from the US-Israel attacks on Iran, to Afghanistan’s newly introduced restrictive Criminal Penal Code.

In Malaysia, while civil society groups and the government have taken steps to open dialogue on refugees’ right to work and pathways to legalisation, many asylum seekers and refugees continue to face raids and arrests, living with the real threat of deportation to the countries they once fled.

Immediate action is needed to ensure their rights and protections are upheld.

The convergence of state-sanctioned violence and military escalation creates a ‘push’ so extreme that fleeing becomes a matter of survival rather than a choice.

When legal systems turn ordinary citizens into enforcers and conflict destroys essential infrastructure, it drives mass displacement across borders, often pushing vulnerable populations toward Southeast Asia.

This creates a cycle of trapped migration, where refugees flee institutionalised death or gender apartheid only to find themselves in a secondary crisis of precarity, constantly moving to evade both their original persecutors and the host country’s detention and enforcement systems.

Despite Malaysia being a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw), the rights of refugee women are often withheld under Malaysia’s legal framework, which criminalises the presence of irregular migrants, including those with and without UN refugee agency (UNHCR) cards, preventing access to healthcare, education and formal justice systems.

For refugee women, this legal ‘non-existence’ means they cannot access formal justice systems if they experience domestic violence or sexual assault within or outside their communities. The fear of being arrested for their immigration status as a structural barrier often outweighs their need for physical safety, forcing them to opt for silence.

This also means that reporting domestic violence or sexual assault carries the real risk of arrest, often outweighing the need for physical safety. Many women are forced to remain silent, bearing the mental, physical and emotional burdens of pregnancy without access to antenatal or postnatal care.

Even if they are able to work, refugee women are confined to informal, high-risk jobs. Their lack of legal recognition leaves them vulnerable to wage theft and workplace abuse and exploitation, with no access to legal remedies.

Structural barriers also exacerbate child marriage, as families resort to early marriage of daughters to ease financial pressures. Far from a solution, this practice entrenches a devastating cycle of poverty and systemic discrimination. It robs girls of their autonomy and thrusts them into the perils of early childbirth during the very years they should be empowered through schooling.

Asylum Access Malaysia calls for practical and forward-looking steps to better protect refugee women and girls, including clearer pathways to legal recognition and safe employment, as well as ensuring access to healthcare, justice and education without fear.

Strengthening these areas would help reduce structural barriers, uphold dignity, and enable refugees to contribute meaningfully to Malaysian society.

Protecting refugee women is not only a humanitarian obligation – it reflects Malaysia’s core values. Choosing compassion over criminalisation strengthens justice, social cohesion and economic growth.

Let progress be measured by how we protect the most vulnerable, building a future where every woman and girl can live with safety, agency and hope. – Asylum Access Malaysia