Bereket, Senait og Senari

Bereket and Senait grew up in Eritrea and fell in love in 2009. Senait became pregnant in 2011, but they were unable to marry and move in together because Bereket was only stationed for compulsory military service in the city where Senait lived. He could not get time off to hold a wedding, nor did he earn enough money to cover the expenses. So, they had to settle for an engagement. They saw each other almost daily at Senait's mother's house, where she still lived, and everyone considered them a couple.
 
Shortly before their daughter Senari was born in April 2012, Bereket had an opportunity to flee the country – often the only way to escape lifelong military service in Eritrea. After a long and arduous journey, he arrived in Denmark and applied for asylum in September 2014, which he was granted in June 2015. During his asylum interviews, he had already mentioned his girlfriend and daughter, and shortly afterwards, he submitted an application for family reunification for both of them. At that point, they had been separated for over 3 years, and Bereket had in fact never seen his daughter.
 
A year and 2 months later, in November 2016, he received a response: permission for his daughter, but rejection for her mother! Senait had meanwhile fled Eritrea with her daughter and was living in a refugee camp. They had been forced to leave Eritrea illegally in order to take a DNA test at a Danish embassy.
 
Refugees Welcome submitted a new application and asked for the case to be considered on the basis of the daughter's right to be with both her parents – something which would be impossible if the daughter was to either stay with her mother in Ethiopia or fly up to her father in Denmark. Neither of her parents were allowed to go to the country where the other was. Bereket decided to let his daughter's entry permit to Denmark expire, as he and Senait could not imagine their 5-year-old daughter living alone with her father, whom she had never met, perhaps separated from her mother forever. We submitted witness statements, photos, excerpts from the asylum interview, screenshots from the couple's weekly internet conversations...
 
In January 2017, we received another rejection: the Immigration Service did not approve that family life had been established, despite the fact that they had a child together, and compulsory military service was rejected as the reason for them not cohabitating normally during their 4-year relationship.
 
We appealed the case to the Immigration Appeals Board, which sent the case back to the Immigration Service after 10 months of processing. The Service rejected the application again in March 2018, and we appealed again to the Board.
 
Bereket obtained a visa to Ethiopia and travelled there to visit his family and see his daughter for the first time. He first had to work for long enough to pay for such an expensive trip as well as build up holiday leave. In the photo, you can see his daughter when she was 5 years old.

In August 2019, Bereket was summoned to an oral meeting at Immigration Appeals Board, which is not done often. The board found him credible and, fortunately, decided that a family life worthy of protection had indeed been established between the three parties. The committee stated that the couple had been in a relationship, had a child together and had only been prevented from living together due to compulsory military service, and therefore granted both mother and daughter residence on special grounds, paragraph 9(c) (1). This was exactly as Refugees Welcome had argued from our first representations – and we were even in direct contact with the head of the Immigration Service office in this case.
 
On 1 October 2019, both mother and daughter received their residence permits and visas for Denmark. The Danish authorities had taken exactly 4 years to send this case back and forth, and the family had been separated for 7 years and 7 months.
 
Totally unacceptable, and this case isn't the only one – we've complained about children being separated from their parents in many similar cases and written several articles about it. We've reached out to the Danish Immigration Service and asked them to change their practice so that families aren't separated like this in the future. They only did that many years later.