Etania Schools Sabah

Etania, meaning the greatness of God, is a group of schools set up for marginalised and stateless children in the state of Sabah, Malaysia. Etania takes any child who has no access to the national education system and provides a complete learning programme designed for the needs of these children. As many of the Indonesian migrants have entered Sabah as undocumented workers, their children – many of whom are born in Malaysia – are not registered in either nation, so becoming stateless. These are Sabah’s ‘invisible’ children, unacknowledged by all. It seems like these children live in spaces of ‘non-existence’, being unacknowledged as people. There are so many hindrances to the registration process that in most cases it is not possible to register the birth of a stateless child, thus making that infant a ‘non-person’ in governance terms. This means thousands of children were born in Sabah but are not claimed or recognised by any country or nation.