There are 10 refugee children, including a one year-old baby, being held at detention camps in Malaysia, the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) office in Kuala Lumpur revealed.

Volker Turk, commissioner of the UNHCR, told malaysiakini that the children, aged from one to 17, are kept together with their refugee parents.

Seven of these children are from the war-torn Aceh region in Indonesia while the rest are from Burma.

Turk, a lawyer by training, stressed that the children should not be detained as refugees as it was against international law.

"Detaining children should always be the last option as it's a violation of the rights of the child. A child should only be detained when there is no other choice or for his own safety and security," he added.

He suggested that they should be released along with their parents while waiting to be sent to a third country.

The number revealed, however, does not reflect the actual situation in Malaysia where huge numbers of children categorised as "illegal migrants" and "stateless" are detained nationwide.

Last week, Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) revealed that 43 children are being held at the temporary immigration detention centre in Menggatal, Sabah.

Malaysia is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC) since 1995, in which minors have certain rights including non-discrimination, free primary education, legal protection, right of nationality and must be given special protection.

Education

Meanwhile, Turk disclosed that UNHCR is now on the negotiation stage with the Malaysian government to allow the estimated 3,000 refugee children to have access to local schools.

At the moment, refugee children are not allowed to go to national schools here.

He said he had a discussion with Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein Onn two weeks ago on the matter.

"The (education) issue was not brought up seriously before. Now that the government is aware of such a request, we hope that something positive for the sake of the children's educational needs will come up," he added.

"Providing education to refugee children is like opening up the world to them. It's important for people to realise that the world is not a close environment," Turk said.