•  Can I address the issue at a higher level through advocacy to fix it permanently? Can I help community members to conduct this advocacy themselves? •  Why does this issue recur? Might information-sharing on a group level, via workshops, be more effective than individual advice-giving? • Should I flag this case for litigation?  ee 10. Changing a System for litigation and advocacy strategies for S wider scale change. CASE STUDY MYLA has a policy of helping elderly and illiterate clients to fill out forms and sometimes accompanies them, but all other clients receive verbal guidance only. 9. HELPING CLIENTS THIS CHAPTER GIVES AN OVERVIEW OF THE SERVICES THAT PARALEGAL PROGRAMS CAN PROVIDE. It covers the provision of a range of services, including information-sharing, accompaniment, advocacy, litigation, and referrals. 9.1 Meeting Clients’ Needs in Different Legal Contexts There is considerable variation in how countries design and administer civil registration and identification systems, and in procedures for establishing or confirming nationality and identifying stateless persons. This section gives basic guidance in thinking through how paralegals can provide assistance in different national and local settings. It is complementary to earlier sections on needs assessments [section 2.2] and legal and policy frameworks [section 2.4]. The remaining sections in this chapter focus on specific types of services that may address particular situations. Birth registration is generally the most important document for accessing rights and services. By itself, it may not always be enough to access the full panoply of rights, but it is often necessary. Clients who seek marriage or death registration may be using it in order to obtain birth registration, and these documents may present challenges in their own right. Death registration documentation may also be important for activating inheritance rights. Birth certificates are often called “breeder documents” because other forms of identity documents rely on birth registration and birth certificates to verify and authenticate a person’s identity. Here are some reasons that clients may have difficulty getting these key documents: •  Prejudiced officials—or those who believe, incorrectly, that birth registration will provide nationality—refusing to register births. •A  late or non-standard birth registration requires court proceedings (e.g. for orphans or abandoned children) that were never completed. •T  he government requires documents that the client cannot get, such as parents’ IDs or witnesses of the circumstances of the birth, in order to register a birth. 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 | 101