Beyond aid_ Sustainable responses to meeting language communication needs in humanitarian contexts

This article navigates the complexity of the humanitarian system, the potential of the humanitarian-development nexus, and the commitments of the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016 as a backdrop to designing sustainable interpreter training programmes. It argues that these programmes must be locally designed to respond to real needs and developed and implemented by local actors living and working in the contexts where building trained interpreter capacity is essential to the success of the humanitarian agenda. It further highlights the crucial importance of decolonising aid and empowering local actors in efforts to advance the cause and quality of multilingual communication in crisis contexts. Two case studies from conflict-affected regions in the Middle East and East Africa—Jordan and Kenya—illustrate how cross-cutting issues from national, regional and international politics, humanitarian agendas, international aid, Higher Education in Emergencies, and country-specific policy agendas inform the design, development, and implementation of university-level training programmes in humanitarian interpreting.