Malaysia Scores Poorly On Education Rights Lags Behind Neighbours

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A report by the New Zealand-based Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) has shown that the Malaysian government is falling behind in ensuring the right to education.
ADSIn relation to its income, Malaysia has achieved only 64.4 percent of what it can be doing for males in terms of educational rights.
For females, it is achieving 70.7 percent.
Despite the higher female score, HRMI Southeast Asia consultant Keshia Mahmood stressed that both fall under the “very bad” range.
“HRMI data assesses how well governments are fulfilling their human rights obligations, relative to the resources they have available (a country’s income or GDP per capita).
“In other words, we’re measuring how effectively a country is using its existing resources to ensure good human rights outcomes for its people.
“So, for example, a score of 60 percent on the right to education does not mean that only 60 percent of children are in school.
“Instead, it means that the government is only achieving 60 percent of what is possible at its income level,” Keshia explained.
This morning, HRMI released its 2025 Rights Tracker report, which analyses governments across three categories: quality of life, safety from the state, and empowerment.
Education rights fall under the quality of life category.
Among Asean countries, Malaysia is third from last with a 67.5 percent overall in education rights, above only Brunei (62.4) and Laos (58.5).
Scoring higher are Vietnam (97.2 percent), Singapore (95.2), Myanmar (87.3), Cambodia (79.9), Thailand (77.8), Indonesia (77.3), and the Philippines (67.7).
“Looking at the over-time graph, Malaysia’s performance has been largely stagnant over the past decade: it scored 67.2 percent in 2010 and 67.5 percent in 2022,” Keshia noted.
ADSAmong others, those most at risk of having their right to education violated include:
Migrants and/or immigrants
People without a legal identity (such as refugees and stateless people)
Those with disabilities
People with low social or economic status
Street children or homeless youth
Indigenous people
In the quality of life category, Malaysia was found to be doing well in the right to work, with 99.8 percent. It also received 90.8 percent in the right to housing.
However, its lowest score is in the right to food (63.9 percent).
Overall, in this category, it scored 79.1 percent, which is just below the “fair” rating.
In terms of safety from the state, Malaysia’s overall score was 7.1 out of 10, which is between fair and good.
The highest subcategory score went to freedom from forced disappearances (8.5), followed by extrajudicial execution (6.8), arbitrary arrests (5.9), and torture and ill treatment (5.8).
HRMI said the total score indicates that a significant number of the population do not get to practice the freedoms above.
But it said the data suggests that Malaysia is doing better than average in comparison to regional counterparts.
Civil liberties, political freedoms
In the empowerment category, however, Malaysia scored 4.8 out of 10.
“Malaysia’s empowerment score of 4.8 out of 10 suggests that many people are not enjoying their civil liberties and political freedoms (freedom of speech, assembly, and association, democratic rights, and religion and belief),” the report noted.
The country’s highest score went to the subcategory denoting participation in the government (5.9), assembly and association (4.7), religion and belief (4.5), and opinion and expression (4.2).
“For civil and political rights, we don’t have sufficient data across East Asia and Pacific countries to allow for a regional comparison.
“However, when compared to the other countries in our sample, Malaysia is performing close to average on empowerment rights,” it said.
The report was produced after surveying local human rights experts on the government’s actions over the past year.
It used definitions of human rights from international law. - Mkini

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