Abraham and Haben, Eritrea

When Abraham fled Eritrea in 2012, he had to leave behind his young wife, Haben. She ended up waiting for 5 years before she could finally be reunited with him.

Abraham came very close to dying during the journey through the Sahara and his stay in Libya, where many in his group of refugees died from thirst and abuse. They were even forced to drink their own urine to survive.

He was granted asylum in Denmark in 2015 after more than a year of waiting and applied for family reunification as soon as his wife had been smuggled out of Eritrea. They received a rejection after waiting another year for the case to be processed. Marriage certificates from Eritrea are not recognised, and the couple had only managed to live together for 9 months because Abraham had been both in military service and in prison. (Read more under Family reunification from Eritrea.)

Additionally, the Immigration Service interpreted Abraham’s stay in Sudan from 2012–2013 as a “voluntary termination of cohabitation.”

Abraham contacted Refugees Welcome, knowing us from our visits to his asylum centre in 2014 when all Eritreans were put on hold. We did not have great expectations for the case, but his streaming tears convinced us to give it a try. We submitted a complaint and documentation showing that the couple had been in contact the entire time and were deeply distressed by the separation. The case was reopened and reversed. This was in fact due to the result of our appeal in a similar case from Sudan (read more under Changes in practice for family reunification).

During the appeal process, Abraham took two weeks off from work to travel to Ethiopia and support Haben, who was not very well at all. RW was at the airport to welcome her when she finally arrived in Denmark. Abraham now works as a car painter, they have two children, and have kept in touch with RW over the years.