This article is written by Toni Fazaeli, a former senior civil servant in England

  • **The problem: **Government is not engaging with asylum seekers, refugees and other citizens due to language issues.
  • **Why it matters: **It is an expectation and right for individuals to understand the state and be understood by it; and for this right not to be infringed due to language.
  • **The solution: **The state has a clear strategy for interpreting and translation in the short term and robust systems for teaching the host country’s language(s), ensuring rapid proficiency.

Every country in the world has, or is likely to have, a significant number of adults and children arriving from other countries to settle and unable to speak the host country’s official language or languages. This means in the short term, before the new language(s) are acquired, individuals are not able to properly engage with the state without interpreters and translations.

Therefore, the state is responsible for ensuring that interpreting and translation services should be available pro tem, to enable proper engagement with its citizens not yet fluent in the country’s language(s). The state can work with civil society to deliver. For example, in England, The Bell Foundation provided translations of how the school system works in Ukrainian for Ukrainian refugees.

For any civil servant, when proposing policy options to ministers, consideration needs to be given to how translation and interpreting services will enable access for citizens without proficiency in the host country language(s). This is vital so that these individuals can understand, engage and benefit from the policy.

Making a meaningful difference

Beyond the short term, and to ensure the state delivers individuals’ rights, there also needs to be rapid and intensive learning of the official language(s) made available and for this to be readily accessible. I contend that this expectation on the state is self-evident and unarguable since no state intends to disenfranchise its citizens. Moreover, they are rooted in internationally agreed human rights treaties drawn from the Declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1948.

Civil servants, I believe, have a crucial role in raising the issue of language capability as an enabler for individual policies – both the upstream policy development and the downstream policy delivery stages.

But how effectively do governments ensure fluency in the official language(s) to enable these rights to be secured? I think there are opportunities to share good practices in this area between nation-states, including strategies for assessing and maximising positive impact.

In my time as a senior civil servant, any policy development work and submissions to ministers needed to consider certain areas, for example, interdependencies with other policies, costs and Equality Act impact assessments etc. Looking back, I think more focus could have been given to impact those without English language proficiency within the Equality Impact assessments.

Measuring up

A key overarching question for civil servants is how well the state measures up to the fundamental principles of a civilised society, as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

In England, there are 1.6 million children in the school system where English is an additional language and not the language spoken at home, and an estimated 850,000 adults, based on census data, who are not yet able to communicate effectively in English.

I find it important to reflect on how well we achieved these rights for individuals not yet proficient in the official language(s) of the country, in order that they are able to exercise the rights and freedoms to which they are entitled.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 sets expectations for every country, including:

  • “To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”
  • “A common understanding of these rights and freedoms”
  • “Shall strive by teaching and education promote respect for these rights and freedoms”
  • And specifically in Article 2, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms…. Without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language…”
  • And Article 21, “Everyone has the right of access to public service in his country”
  • Article 26, Education “...shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups…” and “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”
  • Article 27, “Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and it benefits”
  • Article 29, “Everyone has duties to the community”

Balancing the books and priorities

For example, for parents to be able to make educational choices for their children, parent(s) not yet proficient in English (or Welsh in Wales) need to have interpreters and translations readily available to them.

Budgets are always under pressure, and it is notoriously difficult for most governments to work effectively across spending departments, and allocate a budget to a lead department for cross-government policy. For example, policies for an ageing society or for those under 5 years old, or obesity, or host country language proficiency and translation and interpretation services all cross several departmental remits.

Civil servants, I believe, have a crucial role in raising the issue of language capability as an enabler for individual policies – both the upstream policy development and the downstream policy delivery stages. In my experience, usually, the education department is the overall owner of language learning provision, but translation and interpreting services can sit with several departments. This can be an inefficient way of securing good-quality services with sufficient specialists.

You might be wondering as you read this piece about the relationship with immigration policies? Immigration policy is separate. Ensuring interpreting and translation services in the short term and rapid acquisition of language proficiency is fundamental to the state being able to engage and to meet its Human Rights ambitions for its people.

There is an urgency in securing rapid language learning for those not yet proficient, and a clear economic rationale for systematic investment (not stop-start-stop) so that individuals swiftly become contributors to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and to society more fully. Multilingual children and adults have so many assets and abilities to offer. Ironically, I wonder if the relatively small costs and relatively small proportions of citizens involved might be a hindrance, as ‘small ticket’ items can fall below the government's radar? Civil servants can proactively help rectify this and create a policymaking culture where it is axiomatic and uncontested that fluency in the host country’s language must happen—as a matter of course. Not to do so is in effect a dereliction of a state’s duty to ensure it can and does engage with all its citizens.

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