JAPAN Forward launched the “Ignite” series of essays in English to directly share Japanese students‘ voices with their global peers. University student Zhe Tian was its first contributor, and here he returns with two colleagues, Sakura Aoki and Yiting Chen, as Waseda University members of the nongovernment organization, Stateless Network Youth. In their essay, these three future leaders challenge us to join them in addressing the global problem of children born into invisibility.
Please add your own thoughts in the comments section at the end.
The Unfiltered Reality of Stateless Children in Malaysia
The sea was impossibly blue.
A short boat ride from a port town in eastern Sabah, Malaysia, a cluster of homes came into view — built atop a fragile skeleton of weathered timber, rising straight out of the water. This was the place where we first came face to face with the reality of statelessness.
We traveled to Malaysia this year as members of Stateless Network Youth, a program dedicated to learning about stateless communities firsthand. Throughout our journey, we were guided by David, a coordinator who has spent years supporting stateless communities across the region.
‘Boss!’
About an hour and a half’s drive along a two-lane road with no traffic lights brought us to a small port town.
The moment David’s car pulled up, a crowd of children came rushing toward us. “Boss! Boss!” they called out, greeting David with wide smiles. They were curious about us, too, drifting closer with cheerful, open faces.
Our member, Sakura Aoki, was carrying a shoulder bag. A small boy grabbed it and slung it over his back the instant she opened the car door. The bag looked almost as large as he was.
“It’s okay, I can carry it myself,” she said instinctively. But he simply smiled and kept walking ahead.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Eight.” The answer caught her off guard.
At eight years old, she had spent her days going to school, playing games with friends, and worrying about things that now seem insignificant. Yet this boy carried himself with a quiet sense of responsibility far beyond his age.
Later, she offered him some Japanese snacks. He opened the bag, looked inside with excitement, and immediately held it out to her first. He was curious about the unfamiliar treats and probably hungry too, yet his first instinct was to share.
Sakura was surprised by how easily he moved between languages. Despite being only eight years old, he spoke his community’s language, Malay, English, and Chinese fluently. He was bright, curious, and eager to communicate with everyone around him.
What stayed with her most was not simply his kindness but his potential. Looking at him, it was easy to imagine the many paths he could take in the future. Yet because he is stateless, opportunities that many of us take for granted — pursuing higher education, obtaining formal employment, or even traveling abroad — may remain out of reach. The contrast was difficult to ignore. Here was a child with remarkable talent and curiosity, yet the boundaries of his future may be determined not by his abilities, but by the absence of a nationality.
More Than a Classroom
As we arrived at a village by boat, we climbed off the boat and up a ladder onto the wooden floor of the water village. The sea surface was about two meters below. Emerald-green water stretched out beneath the houses, which were connected by planks with gaps wide enough that even our tallest member — 170 centimeters — had to step carefully to avoid falling through. The children ran across those same planks without a second thought.
Entry to this settlement is normally restricted. We were permitted access because the community school had been established by a Christian church, and we arrived on a church-authorized boat. The residents purchase all their drinking water from outside. There is no electricity ー gas stoves provide the only heat. Income comes mainly from fishing, but fuel costs alone are significant. And with daily necessities on top of that, the burden of simply surviving is immense.
We were welcomed by the village chief and shared the chocolate bread and instant noodles David had brought. It was a warm reception.
Greetings came through handshakes and smiles. Agreement was a thumbs-up. Gratitude was a hand pressed to the chest. The only Malay phrase we had learned was “Terima kasih” ー thank you ー but it was almost always enough. We said it constantly, layering it with thumbs-ups and heart gestures, and somehow the atmosphere always warmed.
Inside the community learning center ー a terakoya in the Japanese tradition ー roughly ninety children, some as young as kindergarten age, were taught by just two or three teachers. When the morning homeroom began, the children sat on the floor and exchanged bright greetings with their teacher.
Understandable Caution
After our activities, David quietly asked us to avoid posting photos of the children or the buildings on social media. Given the precarious circumstances of those who live there, his caution was entirely understandable.
In the past, stateless communities in the region had been abruptly forced to relocate. Even now, David does not know the whereabouts of many people he once knew from those communities.
That morning’s homeroom roll call was not simply the start of a lesson. For children who cannot be certain they will have a home tomorrow, the terakoya was a place to confirm something more fundamental: I am here. You are here. We are still safe.
Afterward, we spent time playing with the children. We had prepared origami, a Japanese game called Daruma-san ga Koronda (a version of “Red Light, Green Light”), gesture games, and banana tag. Words didn’t connect us — but laughter did. For the origami, we folded paper airplanes together, guiding each child hand by hand. When they were finished, we counted aloud: “Satu, Dua, Tiga!” — one, two, three — and launched them all at once. Watching those planes soar through the air, something passed between us that needed no translation.
By the time we said goodbye, we realized that, without meaning to, the children had given us more courage and hope than we had brought for them.
A Girl Who Was Never Allowed to Leave
From the water village, we continued by boat to a nearby island where David had founded a second community school.
As soon as we landed, we carried water and food from the boat into the classroom. David called the children together, and homeroom began. The topic that day was the conflict between the United States and Iran.
He took no sides. Simply, he repeated, again and again, with the kind of conviction that fills a room: War is foolish. Love your neighbor. Please never forget that. A local teacher translated his words, but the translation felt almost unnecessary — every child’s eyes were fixed on David, drawn in by something that went beyond language.
After class, we ran around on the beach with the children. Their smiles were boundless, their eyes clear and open ー as clear as the sea stretching out behind them.
And it was there, in that moment, that something David had told us the night before came rushing back to Zhe Tian.
There was a stateless girl in the region who had been diagnosed with a heart condition.
Because she had no nationality, she had no access to public medical support. Then, through David’s network, a rare opportunity appeared: free treatment in South Korea, with all travel and accommodation fully covered.
She never made it.
Because she had no recognized nationality, she was not permitted to leave the country. No passport, no legal right to cross a border ー even to save her own life.
She died without receiving treatment.
One Loaf of Bread, and a Little Sister’s Tears
On another day, we accompanied David on his monthly boat run to distribute food, water, and second-hand clothing to communities scattered across the surrounding waters.
“One item per child,” was the rule. But some children quickly hid what they had received and slipped back into line for more.
Then a girl stepped forward. When she was quietly turned away for a second portion, she reached over without hesitation, took her three-year-old sister by the hand, and pushed her toward David. Startled, the toddler burst into tears. The girl said nothing. There was only the quiet, calculating love behind the act: maybe she can get one.
In a single loaf of bread, a girl’s fierce determination to protect her family. The distribution soon descended into chaos. David tried to establish calm ー “if you form a circle around me, everyone will get something” ー but the order didn’t hold. This cycle, it seemed, repeated itself every time he came.
Medicine was distributed too. In the harsh conditions of life on the water, even a fever can be fatal. Most of the people collecting supplies were women and children. The men made their living fishing, but rarely left the islands ー they felt they could not survive on land.
700 Invisible Children
Our research trip took us not only to that port town but also to another area of the region, where we visited a community school packed with over 700 children ー all of them undocumented. Their ages ranged from primary to secondary level. Classrooms were lively, even chaotic. The teachers smiled through it with weary patience, and the children greeted us with high-fives and heart signs when we said goodbye.
A local coordinator explained the structural cause of their statelessness with blunt simplicity. Many of these children have no nationality because their parents never registered their marriage. In local tradition, the ceremony itself constitutes a marriage ー the idea that a legal document is also required is simply not known to many. And even when parents try to register a birth, they often cannot, because birth registration requires official documents that undocumented migrants do not have.
A procedural gap somewhere in one generation shapes the entire life of the next. These children are born into invisibility ー treated, from their first breath, as people who do not exist.
Why Is the Sea So Blue?
Some time after returning to Japan, our member Yiting Chen reached out to a girl she had met on the island ー a teenager from that community. Despite growing up without electricity or running water, she was, in so many ways, a typical girl of her generation. She wore makeup, posted selfies on WhatsApp, and sent birthday wishes to friends. Through a mobile phone, she was reaching toward a world beyond her island.
What does that “outside world” look like through her screen? And does she know how she looks from out here?
Playing on the beach with the children, Zhe Tian kept a particular weight tucked in the corner of his mind. He wanted to be fully present ー to laugh, to make a memory worth keeping. But the harder he tried, the more the girl’s story, the story of the missing villagers, and the silence of the girl who pushed her little sister forward refused to leave him.
The children’s eyes were as clear as the sea behind them. And yet something would not settle.
If people are suffering from the injustice inflicted on the stateless ー and if a girl died because she was not permitted to cross a border ー why does this sea remain so indifferently, so relentlessly blue?
That question has no easy answer. But carrying it home feels like the only honest first step.
A Right to Exist
The eight-year-old boy who offered his snacks before taking a single bite himself. And the girl who pushed her little sister forward for a piece of bread. The teenager on that island watching the outside world through a phone screen. They are living this reality right now, at this very moment.
There are people for whom the simple fact of having no nationality ー something the rest of us received at birth without a thought ー means losing their education, their healthcare, their freedom to move, and sometimes their lives.
We want as many people as possible to know that. Together with the blue of that sea.
RELATED:
Authors: Zhe Tian, Sakura Aoki, and Yiting Chen are students at Waseda University and members of Stateless Network Youth, a nongovernmental organization associated with Stateless Network Japan.