UM + 3 v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Facts

The appellant is a national of Pakistan who entered the United Kingdom in November 2019 on a student visa; her appeal was linked with those of three others under appeal numbers PA/69498/2024, PA/51143/2025, PA/51141/2025 and PA/51138/2025, and an anonymity order was made. The Secretary of State accepted that the appellant had been subjected to a forced marriage in Pakistan and that she has a new partner in the United Kingdom, with whom she has two children. She claimed that, if returned, she would be killed by her mother or her brother because she had fled her arranged marriage and had a relationship and two children outside wedlock, and that she feared her partner's family and wider societal stigma and discrimination. Her brother, she said, was a landowner with friendships among police officers and influence over jirgas, and her husband was connected with the Taliban and came from a family involved in killings. The Secretary of State refused the claim on 11 December 2023, taking the view that sufficient protection was available in Pakistan and that the appellant could relocate to Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad, and relying on country information that women in Pakistan may divorce their husbands through a third party so as to avoid violent reprisal. The appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal on protection, humanitarian protection and human rights grounds.