W HO WE ARE SERV I N G A N D W HY Conclusions on statelessness. In 2018, two global compacts, on migration and refugees, will be concluded under the auspices of the United Nations. Ensuring that every individual is recognized as belonging and can access the documents to prove their legal status is important and multifaceted work. Governments with political will to do so can end the legal and administrative causes of statelessness and lack of documentation, but positive legislative and policy reform, modernized civil registries, and other high-level initiatives often do not alone improve access to documentation for those who need it. Effective access depends on the education, awareness, and initiative of individuals in navigating legal identity documentation processes and claiming their own rights. Knowledgeable support can make an enormous difference in the lives of individuals. This guide is designed to support community-based efforts that will complement the high-level initiatives described above. Its focus is legal empowerment through a community-based approach. The advice and resources provided will also be relevant for other models of communitybased and grassroots justice services. The guide itself incorporates the experiences of a wide variety of different models of grassroots justice services. (For more, see A Note on the Preparation of this Guide.) RELATED RESOURCE Open Society Justice Initiative, Community-based Paralegals: A Practitioner’s Guide Community-based practitioners can provide direct support to people who are undocumented, under-documented, stateless, and at risk of statelessness, and can also bring attention to their needs. This guide was written with disadvantaged groups in mind, because disadvantage compounds the inability of an individual to resolve basic administrative and justice problems. Where lack of documentation is systemic, entire communities may be undocumented and legally invisible. Paralegal programs can be a particularly effective form of community-based support in such situations. All over the world, paralegals have helped people obtain documentation and use it to access rights and services. They have also helped people to demand changes to the documentation system itself. A primary tool that community-based practitioners such as paralegals use is accompaniment. For the purposes of this guide, accompaniment essentially refers to the process of guiding clients step-by-step as they engage with the often complex web of state bureaucracy that makes up a country’s civil documentation and identification systems. This has also been called “navigating authorities.” Community-based practitioners use a range of other skills in their work, including: • Information-sharing and advice-giving • Advocacy, including advocacy based on specific data, for legal or policy reform • Litigation support • Community organizing • Collective casework • Referrals 10 | 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