This is Part 5 of a Malaysia Day series on the issue of statelessness in the country.

As a waste disposal truck trundles down a dirt road, families rush toward it from a clearing. The truck will dump its contents on an expansive, methane-emitting, 30-year-old mountain of waste.

On the ground, a wriggling maggot moves into the pile, on the way to complete its life cycle in this landfill where the household waste from every home in Lahad Datu, Sabah, is deposited.

Al Nazri Azmi, two, was born in this toxic landscape to stateless parents squatting and...