Kenyan domestic worker sentenced to 100 lashes in Saudi Arabia for giving birth outside marriage
Hospitals must report single mothers to police, 2020 flogging ban never covered adultery
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A woman cleans the booth of Saudi Arabia at the ITB tourism fair in Berlin on 3 March. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images
theguardian.com
A Kenyan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 100 lashes for giving birth outside marriage. Esther Wanja Muthoni, recruited to work as a housekeeper and nanny, was sentenced last month; the child's father, an Egyptian man she describes as having had a brief relationship with, has since left the kingdom.
Under Saudi Arabia's sharia system, sex outside marriage is a criminal offence, and hospitals are required to report single women who give birth to the authorities. Rights groups say women are disproportionately targeted under these laws — a 2024 Guardian investigation found Kenyan single mothers in the kingdom routinely abandoned by their children's fathers, who fear arrest for extramarital sex.
The sentence sits awkwardly beside the reform record the kingdom markets to the world. In April 2020, Saudi Arabia announced the end of flogging as a judicial punishment — but the reform covered only ta'zir offences, where judges have discretion. Flogging remains available for hudud offences with fixed punishments under Islamic law, including adultery, according to a 2021 report by ALQST, the UK-based rights organisation. Its acting director, Maryam Aldossari, called the ruling "an act of violence" and said Muthoni should have been sent back to Kenya. "It just shows the hypocrisy behind so-called Saudi reform," Aldossari said. "We know MBS has been trying to show the world that Saudi is becoming a modern country that empowers women, yet we see the court sentence a mother to 100 lashes."
A planned visit to the kingdom by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, was postponed last week. Alsalem said she had intended to raise specific cases during the visit and would now do so separately through her mandate's channels. Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, founder of the migrant-rights group Do Bold, said cases involving Kenyan mothers have been harder to help than most: "I haven't been able to get help from the Kenyan authorities to support these women."
Muthoni told the New York Times she does not know whether she can endure the lashes. "I don't deserve this," she said.