produce to Home Affairs a maternity certificate or clinic card from the time of birth. Children of foreign parents struggle in this regard even more than children of citizens, for whom Home Affairs will consider affidavits from parents and others in the registration process in lieu of a maternity certificate. If a client was born at home or outside of a hospital or registered clinic, the client or her parent will likely only approach you after case has become a ‘'late registration of birth.’ In these cases, the LRB process outlined above in section 5.1.3 should be followed. The 2010 amendments have entered a new requirement to the registrations of children who have foreign parents. The parents must produce a valid passport, visa or permit as the case may be otherwise the birth may not be registered.116 The foreign father must also undergo a paternity test at his own cost in order for his particulars to be added to the birth certificate. Every person born on the territory is entitled to birth registration, which protects each person's fundamental right to a nationality – whether South African or otherwise. The birth certificate is the key to proving their citizenship claims so as an attorney or social worker, always come back to the Constitution and international customary law when trying to advocate on behalf of clients. 5.1.4 People who lost or renounced South African citizenship Lack of safeguards in loss of citizenship At present, the Citizenship Act allows the Minister to deprive a child of his or her citizenship in the case of a parent having lost his/hers (in accordance with the provisions of sections 6 or 8 of the Act). If the other parent does not retain citizenship, the child may become stateless. There is no safeguard against statelessness (i.e. ‘unless the child would be rendered stateless’). Ideally, as provided in the 1961 Convention, such deprivation should only be permitted if the child would not become stateless as a result. An amendment to Section 6 the Act recently provided new grounds for loss of citizenship at 6(3): Any person who obtained South African citizenship by naturalisation … shall cease to be a South African citizen if he or she engages, under the flag of another country, in a war that the Republic does not support. This provision is troublesome, considering that (1) it applies seemingly automatically and yet (2) provides little detail on how it would be determined that a particular war is one which the 116 Regulation 8 to the Births and Deaths Registration Act. 80 Promoting citizenship and preventing statelessness in South Africa: A practitioner’s guide