Stakeholder mapping can involve: • A spreadsheet where actors, relevant statements and activities, and suggested courses of action (e.g. advocacy actions, strengthening collaboration) can be recorded. • Online searches for statements by legislators and community representatives on topics like “birth registration,” “statelessness,” or other relevant issues (e.g. minority rights, discrimination). • Inviting community members to draw their own visual stakeholder maps, showing the relationships among key actors. • Listing everyone a person interacts with when seeking an ID document. • Determining different officials’ levels of influence in decision-making on issuance of documents or access to rights and services. A greater level of influence may suggest a person should be a priority for advocacy measures. • Contacting communities and long-term staff of local organizations to learn about the background to a stakeholder’s negative position towards documentation and citizenship rights for certain groups. This may reveal potential future advocacy strategies. • Considering whether community leaders are genuinely representative of the community. If not, identify who can speak on behalf of marginalized groups. • Researching political dynamics, divisions, and disputes within the community in order to avoid inadvertently aligning your project with a particular sub-group.  ee 10. Changing a System for guidance on influencing strategies, S and 4. Building Key Relationships for advice on how to approach stakeholders you have identified. RELATED RESOURCE The following resources offer guidance about interviewing and conducting research with children, which you may find useful if planning on speaking directly with children during the needs assessment: • What are the best ways to interview children? London School of Economics • Guidelines for interviewing children, Save the Children • Assessment Guidelines: UNICEF Child Protection Assessment Tool, UNICEF • UNHCR’s Guidance Document on Measuring Stateless Populations provides technical advice for researching this group, through statistical desk review and surveys. 2.4 Legal and Policy Frameworks Local laws and policies on statelessness, citizenship rights, birth registration, and legal identity documentation and identity documentation have enormous influence on your ability to be effective. They also may determine what other approaches, such as advocacy, lawyer-led legal aid, or strategic litigation, may be appropriate. A desk review is a good starting point; test cases can also be used to understand the nuances of policy and how laws are implemented in practice. First, consider laws that affect your mode of action: the institutional legal context, the laws on NGOs, legal aid, and the role of paralegals. Do these restrict your ability to serve the needs you identified? As well as explicitly restrictive NGO and legal aid laws, this includes practices that treat activities you might be planning as hostile to the state, and paralegals engaged in these activities may be at risk. Sometimes paralegals or NGOs require accreditation. DISCRIMINATION EMPOWERMENT SUSTAINABILITY DATA RELATED RESOURCES (EXTERNAL) RELATED SECTIONS (WITHIN) A C O M M U N I T Y- B A S E D P R A C T I T I O N E R ’ S G U I D E : D O C U M E N T I N G C I T I Z E N S H I P A N D OT H E R F O R M S O F L E G A L I D E N T I T Y | 23