It is a clear April day in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. In the garden of the Finnish Embassy, Somali citizen Abdulkarim Abdullah squeezes a piece of paper, which means more to him than anything has meant in a long time.

The paper says that Abdullah’s application for a residence permit in Finland has been approved. He can take with him his children, aged five and seven, who have not seen their mother or their older siblings in more than four years.
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In 2006 the family split up when unrest again drove the family from their home town, Mogadishu, Somalia. The house was sold, and the wife took the two older children with them to Europe, on a trip arranged by smugglers.

The youngest of the children, little Abdi, was just a year old at the time.

The wife ended up in Finland, where she applied for family unification more than two years ago. In the past two years Abdullah has been waiting in the Ethiopian capital. Now he is smiling. The last time that he was this happy was, perhaps 13 years ago when he was married.

His wife also applied for residence permits for the family’s two foster children – Abdullah’s own sister, and his wife’s niece. Their applications were denied by the Finnish Immigration Service.
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The Abdullah story is part of the daily routine at the Finnish Embassy in Ethiopia. Family unification is the biggest task of the embassy. Their number has been increasing constantly in recent years, and personnel resources seem to be inadequate to handle all of the applications.

About 5,000 relatives of Somalis living in Finland are waiting for an answer to their applications for family unification. As there is a backlog of applications, the wait for a decision is more than two years. This was the case for Abdullah and the children. The situation is actually unlawful. The legal maximum time is eight months.
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Somali family unification issues are challenging tasks. Many do not have proper identity documents that would reveal ages and family relationships. The process calls for interviews, DNA tests, and a knowledge for the Somali concept of family, the practice of giving names, and familiarity with conditions in the country.

Officials find the customs that deviate from the Finnish family model to be confusing. In addition, there are suspicions of many kinds of abuses of the system that might be linked with Somali immigration. A week ago Helsingin Sanomat wrote that the Ministry of the Interior suspects that bringing in foster daughters could involve human trafficking.
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At the embassy in Addis Ababa, where most of the family unification interviews are held, none of the officials work full-time on the interviews, or the DNA tests. Interviews are conducted by a variety of personnel – the consul, a project worker sent by the Immigration Service, a member of the Finnish Security Police visiting Ethiopia on official business, or an administrative trainee. They are all competent people, but there are simply not enough of them.

At the end of a painstaking process, nearly half of the applications are rejected as either too vague, or as not meeting the requirements.

To keep the number of applications under control, the rules were recently tightened. For instance, at the beginning of August, a new rule took affect according to which foster children have to be shown to have had the status of family members before the arrival of the first family member in Finland.
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But let’s examine the situation from the vantage point of Ethiopia, Somalia’s neighbour.

Inside Somalia there are about half a million internal refugees, with at least some of them entering the neighbouring countries, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya every day.

Ethiopia is the country that receives the most Somali refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis live there. Tens of thousands have fled the most recent unrest, and are holed up in refugee camps. Those who have been in the country longer usually live in the urban slums populated by Somalis.
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There is a total of about a million people who have fled Somalia during the approximately two decades of continued conflict in the country. Most of those leaving live in neighbouring countries, as well as in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. 

There are more than 10,000 Somalis in Finland, but Finland is not among the most popular new destinations for Somalis. The biggest Somali communities in the Western world are in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. Tens of thousands also live in The Netherlands and in other Nordic Countries.
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There are many Somali neighbourhoods in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. One of them is Saris, which is located near a coffee factory, where Abdulkarim Abdullah lives with his two young children. 

Zahra Ibrahim, a Somali refugee herself, works as an interpreter for the embassy. She takes me on a tour.
The taxi winds around the potholed alleys in the neighbourhood, which has clearly seen more prosperous times, but which is now overpopulated and run-down.
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Abdullah’s home is behind a large metal gate. Noisy activities can be heard from inside. Somali pop music plays, laundry is hanging out to dry on clotheslines that have been set up haphazardly. Dogs and cats play with each other. 

In the yard there are adults, children, and teenagers. The main building is full of people. On the edge of a wall there is a new and shiny smaller house made of corrugated metal, and behind that, there is a tiny concrete building, the former servants’ quarters, with two small rooms. On the floor of the room there are bedclothes, and in the corner of the other one, there are kitchen implements.
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Abdullah lives here with his two children, Jasmin and Abdi. The relatives, who have lived in the city for a longer time, have found a place for him and the children to stay.

Abdullah still holds the residence permit that he jut got form the Finnish Embassy in his hand. It says that he and the children can go to Finland, but the foster children, who are relatives of himself and his wife, will have to stay behind.

In the reasons given for its negative decision, the Immigration Service says that the interviewer estimated that one of the women was at least 30 years old. The other was believed to have been 17.5 years old, and it was felt that she would turn 18 before the residence permit would be granted. Therefore, they were too old to be considered family members under the rules.
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But could it be possible that the foster children who were left without residence permits might actually be the husband’s second or third wives? “No”, says Zahra, who adds that it is quite clear that Abdullah was telling the truth.

“It is actually quite common in Somalia for men to have several wives, but he is too poor for that. Only wealthy men have four wives”, Zahra explains.
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Judging from the names on doors of the stairwell in the very ordinary-looking apartment house in a small Finnish town in Ostrobothnia, a Vietnamese family and a Somali family live in the building in addition to all of the Finns.

Here they are now. Meeting the children again feels quite amazing.

Answering the door is Abdullah’s wife Amal. Nine-year-old Deeqa rushes to say hello. He has lived in Finland for four years and speaks Finnish like any Finnish child, Thirteen-year-old Masud is outside.

Then the little ones, Jasmin and Abdi, emerge. They are laughing.
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The children are watching cartoons on television. Abdi has the flu, and climbs into mother’s lap from time to time to get some comfort.

Abdi is also hungry. It is Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims are supposed to fast during daytime. The youngest children can eat before nine, but the adults try to hold on through the evening, without even drinking water.

The guest is offered juice and cake. I would rather not take anything in a situation when the others are not allowed to have anything.
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When Ramadan is over there will be a feast. Halal meat has been ordered from Helsinki. Guests have been invited, and the children get presents.

Amal has arranged the interiors of the apartment in the Somali style. The large wine-red corner sofa with gold embroidery is from a Somali shop in Helsinki. On the wall there are pictures of Mecca and the Kaaba stone. In the corner there is a an stepper that Amal uses to stay in shape.

The four-room flat with a kitchen is magnificent compared with the temporary hut they had in Addis Ababa.
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On the other hand, the family had quite a comfortable home in Somalia. Abdulakrim worked as a store clerk and his wife stayed at home with the children.

Abdullah comes home from his Finnish language lesson. He and the younger children arrived in Finland in July. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Red Cross and the Finnish state organised the trip and paid for the travel costs.

Finnish classes began immediately. Jasmin and Abdi went into day care in August. Deeqa says that Jasmin is learning Finnish rapidly.
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Amal said that she came to Finland by sea from Stockholm in 2006. She reported to police with her children and applied for asylum. She does not want to discuss about her trip or how much it cost.

Amal knew that Finland is a cold country with snow. Both mother and daughter feel that snow and cold weather are among the best things that Finland has to offer. “Last winter was wonderful”, Deeqa says.
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Mother and daughter do not want to make an issue of negative attitudes of Finns toward Somalis. They get used to catcalls in town. Still they do not want to be recognised on the basis of this article, in which their real names have been changed and the community where they now live is not disclosed.

Deeqa, who now has many Finnish friends, remembers being stared at and laughed at before.
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The family, as it is understood in Finland, is now together.

But what can it feel like to be together again after a separation of four years? Husband and wife look at each other. Each of them say in turn that they love each other and that everything is going well. Abdullah points to a card on the wall with a rose on it, which reads “I love you”. He sent the card to his wife when they were separated. 

But what will happen to the family’s foster daughters who were left behind in Ethiopia? They have now ended up living with other relatives and friends, who could have other foster children from before.

Abdullah hopes that the daughters will get married soon, so that his responsibility for them might end.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat