5.2.2 Accessing refugee status in South Africa Stateless persons may concurrently be refugees. Indeed, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and South Africa's Refugees Act, No. 130 of 1998 recognise this. Both legal instruments provide refugee status to people who are outside their country of nationality or, if stateless, outside their country of habitual residence, who have a fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality or membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, a stateless refugee should receive protection as a refugee, since the arbitrary denial of citizenship due to one’s race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion can indicate persecution. Refugee status provides more benefits than stateless status generally and thus should be the first port of call, particularly in South Africa where there is no parallel scheme requiring the protection of stateless persons. Given that a stateless person may also be a refugee, you must ensure that confidentiality requirements for refugees who might also be stateless are upheld in statelessness determination. Every applicant in a statelessness determination procedure is to be informed at the outset of the need to raise refugee-related concerns, should they exist.130 The identity of a refugee or an asylum-seeker must not be disclosed to the authorities of the individual’s country of origin. Where refugee status and statelessness determinations are conducted in separate procedures and a determination of statelessness can be made without contacting the authorities of the country of origin or without disclosing the client's identity, both procedures may proceed simultaneously. However, to maximize efficiency, where findings of fact from one procedure can be used in the other, it may be appropriate to first conduct interviews and to gather and assess country information for the refugee determination procedure. It is possible, even, that your client’s statelessness is at the very heart of his or her claim to refugee status. This overlap can occur where a person has been denationalised for discriminatory reasons which fall under the listed grounds of the Refugee’s Act. A refugee is defined in the Refugees Act as follows: A person qualifies for refugee status ... if owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted by reason of his or her race, tribe, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group; is outside the country of his or her nationality and is unwilling or unable to avail 130 UNHCR Procedure Guidelines (n 7 above) para 26 - 30. 98 Promoting citizenship and preventing statelessness in South Africa: A practitioner’s guide