Fariba Sadeqi walked into her asylum interview with the vocabulary she needed

Fariba had left Kabul in late 2021. She had reached Italy via Iran and Turkey after a journey of fourteen months, and her formal personal interview with the Milan Commissione Territoriale was scheduled for a Wednesday morning five months after her arrival. She bought our book two weeks before the interview on the recommendation of a legal clinic volunteer who had used it to prepare three other Afghan women’s cases.

The chapter on humanitarian protection in Italy is not a how-to for passing an interview. It is a plain-language explanation of what the Commissione is actually assessing. The three statuses — refugee status under the 1951 Convention, subsidiary protection under the EU Qualification Directive, and the Italian national category of protezione speciale — each have specific evidentiary standards and specific keywords that align with the legal framework. Fariba spent two weeks reading the chapter, taking notes, and rehearsing with the volunteer at the legal clinic.

The interview lasted just over three hours. Fariba described her work as a lecturer at a Kabul university, her role in a girls' education initiative that had received open threats from the Taliban in the months following the fall of the city, her two months in hiding, and her ten-month journey. She used the vocabulary the chapter had given her: well-founded fear, serious harm, individual threat, lack of state protection. She did not have to invent any of her story — she only had to describe it in the categories the Commissione was listening for.

The Commissione’s decision came seventy-four days later. Fariba was granted protezione sussidiaria — a five-year renewable residence permit with the right to work. She is now enrolled in an Italian-language course at an adult-education centre in Milan and is in parallel completing a procedure to have her Afghan academic credentials recognised through CIMEA, the Italian academic recognition agency. She hopes to return to lecturing within three years.

Fariba’s file is the kind of case where the book did not change the outcome of the law — her claim was strong on the facts, and a well-prepared interview with any competent legal representation would likely have reached the same result. What the book changed was her ability to speak the legal language of her own case. For an applicant who has been treated as a victim her whole journey, that is not a small thing.