The Kenyan government has broken its silence on the case of a 40-year-old Kenyan domestic worker sentenced to 100 lashes in Saudi Arabia for giving birth outside marriage, expressing dismay at a punishment it says would be unconstitutional at home while acknowledging Riyadh’s right to enforce its own laws.
Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’Oei said in a statement Wednesday that Nairobi was “saddened by what would constitute ‘cruel and inhuman’ punishment under our jurisdiction, but respectful of the sovereignty of Saudi legal system,” adding that Kenya would “continue to work with our counterparts on these complex arenas of judicial enforcement”.
The statement came a day after The New York Times reported that Esther Wanja Muthoni, a mother of five, had been convicted in October by a three-judge panel in Riyadh of having sex outside marriage and sentenced to 100 lashes and one year of banishment.
She gave birth to her son, Abudy, in August 2025 while working legally as a domestic worker through the Saudi recruitment firm Maharah Human Resources.
Muthoni’s ordeal began when a supervisor discovered her with the newborn at staff accommodation and took her to a hospital, where police detained her for questioning about the pregnancy.
The child’s father, an Egyptian national identified in court documents as Mohamud, had already left the kingdom.
She faced the proceedings without a lawyer, relying only on a court translator, despite being entitled to state-sponsored legal representation as an indigent defendant. She did not appeal, telling The New York Times that returning to her other children in Kenya was her priority.
“I am so afraid,” Muthoni said in a phone interview last month. “I don’t think I can endure those lashes.” She added: “I don’t deserve this”.
Her travel documents, issued by the Kenyan Embassy, have since expired, and it remains unclear when the sentence will be carried out or whether the one-year banishment will result in deportation to Kenya or internal relocation within the kingdom.
Muthoni’s case is not isolated. It sits within a documented pattern of abuse and bureaucratic entrapment facing East African domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, a labour pipeline that a New York Times investigation last year found benefits top Kenyan government officials. Hundreds of Kenyan women have been killed in the kingdom, and reports of rape and beatings are common.
For women who become pregnant outside marriage, the consequences are compounded. Saudi authorities routinely deny birth certificates to children of unwed mothers, and Kenyan diplomats – who could issue emergency travel documents and assist mothers and children in returning home – have frequently ignored them, insulted them, or solicited bribes or sex, according to the Times investigation.
Hospitals in Saudi Arabia are required to report single women who give birth to the authorities, which is how Muthoni’s case came to official attention; rights groups note that most such women give birth at home precisely to avoid detection.
The sentence has also drawn scrutiny to Saudi Arabia’s 2020 announcement that it would restrict flogging as a judicial punishment. While the reform was portrayed internationally as an abolition of corporal punishment, it preserved exceptions for offences classified under hudud – fixed penalties under Islamic law – including sex outside marriage.
Because morality-crime judgments are not routinely published, it is impossible to determine how often lashing is still ordered.
“Most of them give birth at home, that’s why they aren’t reported,” said Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, founder of the nonprofit Do Bold, which advocates for migrant workers’ rights in the Gulf. She told The New York Times that the sentence “strips a mother of her dignity and does the opposite of protecting vulnerable women. It targets them”.
Maryam Aldossari, acting director of the UK-based rights organisation ALQST, was more blunt: “It just shows the hypocrisy behind so-called Saudi reform. 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”.
The Kenyan government’s response to Muthoni’s case comes against a backdrop of years of criticism over its handling of migrant workers in the Gulf.
In June 2026, Kenya’s Employment and Labour Relations Court ruled that the state had failed in its constitutional duty to protect Kenyan migrant workers in the Middle East from exploitation, trafficking, and violence, ordering sweeping reforms to the labour migration system.
Just weeks later, on July 5, Labour Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua signed a new bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia aimed at regulating domestic worker recruitment and strengthening protections.
The agreement, however, did not specify how cases involving workers facing criminal proceedings, expired travel documents, or difficulties securing children’s travel papers would be handled—precisely the circumstances in which Muthoni now finds herself.
The Foreign Ministry has previously acknowledged the scale of the problem. In a November 2025 policy briefing, it disclosed that a Joint Interdepartmental Working Group had facilitated the return of 59 Kenyan mothers and 73 children from Saudi Arabia through emergency travel documents, and that 707 DNA samples had been collected to verify parent-child relationships for birth certificate processing.
For Muthoni, those mechanisms have yet to deliver. Her immediate challenge remains securing permission to leave Saudi Arabia with her son, now a toddler, before the sentence is executed.
Muthoni was recruited through Maharah Human Resources, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest labour recruitment companies.
The firm eventually arranged accommodation for her after she was turned away from staff housing and a shelter, and spent time living at a petrol station in Riyadh that had become an informal gathering point for migrant mothers seeking repatriation with their children.
Maharah did not respond to requests for comment from The New York Times.
