Malaysia Orders UN Refugee Agency to Halt New Registrations as It Launches Own System
Malaysia has instructed the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to temporarily stop registering new refugees in the country, as the government begins implementing its own refugee registration program called Dokumen Pendaftaran Pelarian (DPP). Deputy Foreign Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni announced the Cabinet decision, stating the DPP will allow Malaysia to manage refugee data more systematically without relying on foreign entities. As of February, approximately 215,600 refugees and asylum-seekers were registered with UNHCR in Malaysia, mostly from Myanmar, including over 126,000 Rohingya. The move follows years of tightened immigration enforcement, with 92,000 undocumented migrants arrested in 2024 and growing public hostility toward Rohingya refugees. The government says the pause will allow UNHCR to focus on resettling already registered refugees. Human rights groups have expressed concerns about the impact of the new program and the registration halt.
Editorial responsibility
- No named human review is recorded for this page.
- Reports are grouped by semantic similarity and deterministic rules. Language models may assist titles, summaries, translation and cross-source analysis; the page itself is projected from evidence records.
- Current automated evidence projection