A Sudanese woman who was initially refused asylum in the UK has won the right to stay after successfully arguing that deportation would breach her human right to a family life, because she is married to her cousin, a recognised refugee already living in Britain. The Home Office had rejected her case, believing the couple's marriage was engineered to secure her entry to the UK, but an Upper Tribunal ruled the union was genuine, allowing her to remain under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Isra Abdallah Ibrahim said she and her husband first married in a customary Islamic ceremony in Sudan in 2011, which was not officially recorded, and then remarried by proxy in Libya in 2014, where marriages of their kind were not otherwise recognised. A lower tribunal had dismissed her claim, suspicious that the Libyan ceremony was an immigration stepping stone, but Upper Tribunal Judge Paul Lodato found her husband had genuinely settled in Libya for over a year before fleeing to Europe amid deteriorating security, and that the marriage was legitimate. He was granted refugee status in the UK in 2015, and the tribunal confirmed cousin marriage is lawful in the UK, ultimately ruling the refusal of her asylum claim was disproportionate.