Afghanistan
THE CRISIS
In August 2021, the collapse of Afghanistan’s government following the U.S. withdrawal from the region had devastating consequences for Afghans. This political collapse in Afghanistan has been exacerbated by climate disaster. Flooding in 2022, both in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, on whom Afghanistan relies for critical goods, in tandem with a harsh winter in 2022, pushed millions of Afghans into famine and starvation, leading to thousands of deaths. Since 2021, more than 1.6 million Afghans have fled the country.
Amidst this crisis, the importance of Afghan translators and interpreters has grown – yet under Taliban rule, they are more persecuted than ever.
OUR INTERVENTIONS
When the Afghan government collapsed, Respond’s caseload exponentiated overnight. As a fledgling, grassroots organization, Respond was suddenly inundated with the need for translation and interpretation from Dari and Pashto to dozens of other languages to support refugees, asylees, and other Afghans needing to migrate and resettle. Meanwhile, we were onboarding new Afghan linguists desperate to earn income while at the same time supporting the evacuation of some of the Afghan translators on our team to Pakistan, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere.
Respond has grown to meet the needs of tens of thousands of Afghans impacted by this crisis, which only has increased since 2021 – in spite of media coverage dropping off almost completely. Especially impacted in the crisis have been Afghan women and LGBTQ+ people; Respond’s interventions have specifically supported and platformed these communities. Our Afghan Languages Team Lead, Uma Mirkhail, herself is an Afghan refugee activist.
We have continued providing direct service to those most impacted, offering workforce development opportunities, and leading advocacy toward systems change in the United States.
DIRECT SERVICE
2178 cases
84.8% are asylum cases
372 pro bono
2852 pages
3205 hours interpreted
1140948 words translated
# value pro bono (value minus paid)
$500,748.38 value
$266,900.17 invoiced
31,200 people served
"I have worked hard to recruit translators who were not able to make it out of Afghanistan, particularly women and queer folks who might not otherwise be able to work. In the past month alone, over 188 Afghans supported by my team were granted asylum. We pay all translators on our team for their critical, life-saving work. Our team members support on average 11 family members."
- Uma
“Respond’s Dari and Pashto interpreters donated over 36 hours to our LGBTQ Afghan asylum seeking clients this month. The care Respond took to provide Queer interpreters made all of the difference.”
- Immigration Equality
"Thank you so much for your assistance in translating the Dari documents for my asylum client. These documents were critical to his successful application!”
- Jewish Family and Community Services, East Bay (JFCS-EB)
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
In the wake of state collapse, including a complete collapse of the financial system, where virtually all peer-to-peer payment applications completely ceased operations overnight, we led around-the-clock mutual aid efforts for Afghan translators at risk under the Taliban. We mobilized to not only provide our translators with access to trauma-informed therapy but also raised funds to provide our Dari and Pashto translators with mutual aid in addition to their paid incomes to sustain themselves during an economic crash that has resulted in mass deaths by starvation in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
171 team members
16 countries
57 jobs created
$195,391.55 paid out to Afghan translators
Many of our Afghan Languages Team members are refugees or asylum seekers themselves. Nearly every single member of the team is earning income for the work. Our Afghan translators report they support on average 11 family members through their work with Respond. In most cases, Respond is their sole source of income. This is all as the international NGO complex turned their back on this persecuted community.
“After the collapse of Afghanistan’s banks, international agencies gave up on paying Afghans. But Respond went the extra mile. I was contacted by Respond the same day the system collapsed. They asked me what I needed at that moment. They raised a fund for us translators and they have not abandoned us since. I am proud to be a Respond translator.”
- Afghan translator
SYSTEMS CHANGE
As we’ve provided direct service and workforce development opportunities to communities at the frontlines of the crisis in Afghanistan, we’ve also fiercely advocated for more humane and just policies in the U.S. immigration context.
We’ve been among the foremost organizations raising the alarm about the unsupervised reliance on AI and machine translation tools can cause deadly consequences for asylum seekers, especially those who speak under-resourced languages like Dari and Pashto.
In 2023, Respond’s Afghan Languages Team discovered that an Afghan woman’s asylum claim had been rejected after an automated tool had egregiously mistranslated her affidavit – changing all “I” pronouns to “we,” leading to major inconsistencies in her story.
