Asked by: Baroness Coussins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 30 October 2018 (HL10805), whether their review of language capability and skills throughout the Department for International Development's resourcing and employee lifecycles has been completed; whether they intend to publish that review; and if so, where.
Answered by Baroness Sugg
The review of language capability and skills through our programme and employee lifecycles has not yet been completed. We are not currently planning to publish the review.
Asked by: Baroness Coussins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding in the report by Translators Without Borders The Language Lesson: What we’ve learned about communicating with Rohingya Refugees, published in November 2018, that international aid workers have over-estimated the number of people who understand Rakhine and Burmese which has exacerbated the exclusion of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh; and what assessment they have made of the impact of such estimates on their co-funded project in Myanmar.
Answered by Baroness Sugg
The UK supports the overall recommendations in the “The Language Lesson” report, which was co-funded by DFID. Since the report was published, access to reliable information has improved according to the latest GroundTruth Solutions survey with Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar. As a follow-up to the report, DFID has supported Translators Without Borders to undertake an innovative Myanmar/Bangladesh cross-border study to examine the Rohingya language in-depth and analyse how language barriers impact access to services and intercommunal relations in Rakhine State and Cox’s Bazar.
DFID will consider with relevant implementing partners how the findings can inform future programme and policy development. DFID has funded Translators Without Borders to engage with humanitarian actors to raise understanding of the language barriers to address needs of Rohingya. This has included training of interpreters, field workers, surveyors and management staff, and the production and dissemination of a glossary of key humanitarian terms in Rohingya language.
Asked by: Baroness Coussins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Respecting communities in International Development: language and cultural understanding, published in June, in particular its finding that the lack of attention to language by the Department for International Development and others can frustrate the success and sustainability of development programmes.
Answered by Lord Bates
We recognise the value of language capability for the delivery of our core mission and programmes. In particular, it enables us to understand contextual issues and needs, and helps us to communicate, engage stakeholders, develop positive relationships, and influence across our delivery chain.
To ensure that we have deep capability in terms of local context, culture and languages, we employ Staff Appointed in Country (SAIC) as a core part of our operating model. Of the 1345 DFID staff employed in our overseas offices, 61% are SAIC. Our SAIC work in a range of advisory, needs assessment, programme design and management, and evaluation roles. SAIC are recruited with a high level of English capability.
For DFID’s UK staff deploying to locations overseas where English is not an official operating language, we seek to recruit people with the specified level of local language required for those roles. Where this is not possible, we provide language tuition to develop people to the required proficiency level. This tuition is delivered in a variety of ways dependent on the needs of the individual and the team they will be joining, e.g. via group tuition and some is immersive 1:1 tuition undertaken overseas.
Through our procurement and funding processes we also verify that our delivery partners have the capability to understand and operate in the relevant country context.
We are reviewing our current approach to language capability and considering how language skills feature through DFID’s resourcing and employee lifecycles. We will consider the findings of the report as part of our review.