Meet Uma: Respond's Afghan Languages Team Lead
In this video, our Afghan Languages Team Lead discusses the importance of her work and why it is so urgent to fund Afghan language practitioners.
“Hi and welcome everyone! It is an honor to lead the Pashto and Dari team at Respond Crisis Translation. I am Uma, and I have been involved in translation and interpretation work for almost a decade now. I was a young child when I was forced to leave my country of origin, Afghanistan, due to conflict, and since then I have been living as a refugee with the hope that peace will prevail soon and I will be able to return home.
As a refugee myself, I love to help refugees and asylum seekers through translation and interpretation support that has a direct impact on their lives. When I found Respond, I was so grateful to be able to join this family of like-minded people organizing language support for refugees and asylum seekers all around the world.
When I joined Respond to lead on Farsi, Dari and Pashto, we had only a couple translators working in these languages, and the requests for support were beginning to pick up as thousands of people fled Afghanistan and needed support translating their asylum applications as they arrived in the US and Canada. After significant outreach, particularly to queer Afghans still stuck in Afghanistan, we now have more than 40 translators working on our Afghan languages team, who have provided more than 562 hours of interpretation and 915 pages of translation to more than 27 organizations, in addition to groups of pro bono attorneys and individual asylum seekers since January.
Our team has been supporting resettlement and asylum processes for Afghans, translating asylum applications and supporting evidence, interpreting for attorneys asylum intake workshops and clinics, and translating and making voice recordings of a mental health curriculum for recently arrived Afghan refugees.
Most of the interpreters on our team are still living in Afghanistan in extremely difficult conditions, and are receiving no income besides their Respond income to support their families. Translators on our team have reported that they support on average 11 family members solely on their Respond income, as other NGOs and the government are not paying salaries currently. As you have all seen in the news, the situation on the ground in Afghanistan is brutal right now, and only getting worse - 5 million children are facing deadly famine, families are selling their organs and children just so they can survive, and the UN recently reported that over 13,000 children have already died since the Taliban takeover in August.
It is hard to emphasize enough how desperately these translators need to be paid for their work. Your support may feel like a drop in the ocean, but it is lifesaving to queer Afghans who have been too afraid to leave their homes since August, and whose incomes are all their families have. These same Afghans are the ones making it possible for everyone who got out to be able to legally file for asylum and start a new life in the US or Canada. We MUST fund their work, and we need your help to do it!
The nature of this work is very stressful - cases are urgent, too often a matter of life and death, and much of the content we deal with is very traumatic. To take care of myself and find rest in the midst of ongoing crises, I paint and write poems, which helps me step back from the overwhelming stress. Respond also has a team of psychologists to support translators and project managers, which is very helpful.
Thank you for helping us in our quest to support both Afghans seeking asylum, and Afghans stuck in Afghanistan - we couldn’t do this without you!”
— Uma Mirkhail
