Step Three: Make your initial assessment After assessing the client's story, the relevant citizenship law and state practice, your client will fall into one of the following three categories: • Client is not stateless You could determine through your interviews with the client and through country research that the client is not stateless. Perhaps the problem is that the client lost his passport or birth certificate and he requires assistance in reissuance of such documents. • Client is at risk of statelessness If your client qualifies for nationality in a country under the letter of the law, and has not yet attempted to obtain citizenship, he or she may be at risk of statelessness. Your client may be more successful in accessing his or her citizenship if assisted by an attorney, even if he has very little documentary evidence of his claim.86 At this point in time, you will want to contact the relevant authorities of the countries in question in order to confirm whether the client is or is not a citizen. The next section will deal with this process in detail. LHR views children born in South Africa to foreign parents who do not have birth certificates as a population at high risk of statelessness. We routinely assists foreign parents in accessing birth registration for their children born in South Africa and in this way work towards preventing statelessness from occurring. • Client is stateless You may find that your client either a) does not qualify as a citizen under any state(s)'s laws or b) qualifies under the law, but has for whatever reason been refused recognition by the state(s) in question despite attempts to claim citizenship. Assessing citizenship and identifying a stateless person in practice 4.3 In these scenarios, your client is currently stateless. You will next confirm his or her status with the competent authorities of the countries in question. 86 However, we should note that some foreign missions will be offended if an attorney contacts them on a client's behalf before the client has tried to obtain assistance alone. For the sake of positive relations with these officials, it may be worthwhile to ask the client to try to access services by himself before you, as an attorney, become involved. Promoting citizenship and preventing statelessness in South Africa: A practitioner’s guide 49