East African Housekeepers Face Rape, Assault and Death in Saudi Arabia

East African leaders and Saudi royals are amongst these profiting off a profitable, lethal commerce in home employees.

March 16, 2025

On any given day in Kenya, dozens, if not tons of of ladies buzz across the Nairobi worldwide airport’s departures space. They huddle for selfies in matching T-shirts, discussing how they’ll spend the cash from their new jobs in Saudi Arabia.

Lured by firm recruiters and inspired by Kenya’s authorities, the ladies have motive for optimism. Spend two years in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper or nanny, the pitch goes, and you’ll earn sufficient to construct a home, educate your kids and save for the long run.

Whereas the departure terminal hums with anticipation, the arrivals space is the place hope meets grim actuality. Hole-cheeked girls return, often ground down by unpaid wages, beatings, hunger and sexual assault. Some are broke. Others are in coffins.

No less than 274 Kenyan employees, largely girls, have died in Saudi Arabia prior to now 5 years — a unprecedented determine for a younger work pressure doing jobs that, in most international locations, are thought-about extraordinarily protected. No less than 55 Kenyan employees died final 12 months, twice as many because the earlier 12 months.

Post-mortem studies are imprecise and contradictory. They describe girls with proof of trauma, together with burns and electrical shocks, all labeled pure deaths. One lady’s reason behind dying was merely “mind lifeless.” An untold variety of Ugandans have died, too, however their authorities releases no information.

There are people who find themselves supposed to guard these girls — authorities officers like Fabian Kyule Muli, vice chairman of the labor committee in Kenya’s Nationwide Meeting. The highly effective committee may demand thorough investigations into employee deaths, stress the federal government to barter higher protections from Saudi Arabia or cross legal guidelines limiting migration till reforms are enacted.

However Mr. Muli, like different East African officers, additionally owns a staffing firm that sends girls to Saudi Arabia. One in all them, Margaret Mutheu Mueni, mentioned that her Saudi boss had seized her passport, declared that he had “purchased” her and often withheld meals. When she known as the staffing company for assist, she mentioned, an organization consultant informed her, “You’ll be able to swim throughout the Pink Sea and get your self again to Kenya.”

In Kenya, Uganda and Saudi Arabia, a New York Occasions investigation discovered, highly effective individuals have incentives to maintain the circulate of employees transferring, regardless of widespread abuse. Members of the Saudi royal household are main traders in companies that place home employees. Politicians and their kinfolk in Uganda and Kenya personal staffing companies, too.

The road between their private and non-private roles typically blurs.

Mr. Muli’s labor committee, for instance, has turn into a distinguished voice encouraging employees to go abroad. The committee has at instances rejected proof of abuse.

Final month, 4 Ugandan girls in maids’ uniforms despatched a video plea to an help group, saying that that they had been detained for six months in Saudi Arabia.

“We’re exhausted from being held in opposition to our will,” one lady mentioned on the video. The corporate that despatched her overseas is owned by Sedrack Nzaire, an official with Uganda’s governing get together who’s recognized in Ugandan media because the brother of the president, Yoweri Museveni.

Practically each staffing company refused to reply questions or ignored repeated requests for remark. That features Mr. Muli, Mr. Nzaire and their corporations.

Kenya and Uganda are deep in a yearslong economic slump, and remittances from international employees are a major supply of revenue. Even after different international locations negotiated offers with Saudi Arabia that assured employee protections, East African international locations missed alternatives to do the identical, data present.

Kenya’s Fee on Administrative Justice declared in 2022 that worker-protection efforts had been hindered by “interference by politicians who use proxies to function the companies.”

Undeterred, Kenya’s president, William Ruto, says he needs to ship as much as half a million workers to Saudi Arabia within the coming years. One in all his high advisers, Moses Kuria, has owned a staffing company. Mr. Kuria’s brother, a county-level politician, nonetheless does.

A spokesman for Mr. Ruto, Hussein Mohamed, mentioned that labor migration benefited the financial system. He mentioned the federal government was taking steps to guard employees, together with hunting down unlicensed recruiting corporations which can be extra more likely to have shoddy practices. He mentioned that Mr. Kuria, the presidential adviser, had no battle of curiosity as a result of he doesn’t work on labor points.

In Uganda, recruiting-firm homeowners embrace a not too long ago retired senior police official and Maj. Gen. Leopold Kyanda, a former army attaché to the US.

Recruiting corporations work intently with Saudi companies which can be equally properly related. Descendants of King Faisal have been among the many largest shareholders in two of the largest companies. A director of a Saudi authorities human rights board serves as vice chairman of a significant staffing company. So does a former inside minister, an Funding Ministry official and a number of other authorities advisers.

Collectively, these companies paint a rosy image of labor in Saudi Arabia. However when issues go flawed, households say, the employees are sometimes left to fend for themselves.

A Kenyan housekeeper, Eunice Achieng, known as house in a panic in 2022, saying that her boss had threatened to kill her and throw her in a water tank. “She was screaming, ‘Please come save me!’” her mom recalled. Ms. Achieng quickly turned up lifeless in a rooftop water tank, her mom mentioned. Saudi well being officers mentioned her physique was too decomposed to find out how she died. The Saudi police labeled it a “pure dying.”

One younger mom jumped from a third-story roof to flee an abusive employer, breaking her again. One other mentioned that her boss had raped her after which despatched her house pregnant and broke.

In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa mentioned that when he discovered his spouse had died in Saudi Arabia, her employer there gave him a selection: her physique or her $2,800 in wages.

“I informed him that whether or not you ship me the cash otherwise you don’t ship me the cash, me, I need the physique of my spouse,” Mr. Waiswa mentioned.

A Saudi post-mortem discovered that his spouse, Aisha Meeme, was emaciated. She had in depth bruising, three damaged ribs and what seemed to be extreme electrocution burns on her ear, hand and ft. The Saudi authorities declared that she had died of pure causes.

Roughly half 1,000,000 Kenyan and Ugandan employees are in Saudi Arabia as we speak, the Saudi authorities says. Most of them are girls who cook dinner, clear or care for youngsters. Journalists and rights teams, who’ve long publicized employee abuse in the kingdom, have usually blamed its persistence on archaic Saudi labor legal guidelines.

The Occasions interviewed greater than 90 employees and members of the family of those that died, and uncovered another excuse that issues don’t change. Utilizing employment contracts, medical recordsdata and autopsies, reporters linked deaths and accidents to staffing companies and the individuals who run them. What turned clear was that highly effective individuals revenue off the system because it exists.

The interviews and paperwork reveal a system that treats girls like family items — purchased, bought and discarded. Some firm web sites have an “add to cart” button subsequent to photographs of employees. One advertises “Kenyan maids on the market.”

A spokesman for the human assets ministry in Saudi Arabia mentioned it had taken steps to guard employees. “Any type of exploitation or abuse of home employees is fully unacceptable, and allegations of such habits are completely investigated,” the spokesman, Mike Goldstein, wrote in an e-mail.

He mentioned the federal government had raised fines for abuse and made it simpler for employees to stop. He mentioned home laborers had been capped at 10-hour workdays and had been assured in the future off per week. He mentioned the federal government now requires employers to pay their maids by way of a web based system and can in the future observe individuals who repeatedly violate labor legal guidelines.

“Employees have a number of methods to report abuse, unpaid wages or contract violations, together with hotlines, digital platforms and direct grievance mechanisms,” he mentioned.

However Milton Turyasiima, an assistant commissioner with the Ugandan Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Improvement, mentioned that abuse remained rampant.

“We get complaints each day,” he mentioned.

Promoting a Dream

Recruiters fan out throughout East Africa, from impoverished hilltop villages to the cinder block neighborhoods of Nairobi and Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

They seek for individuals determined, and bold, sufficient to depart their households for low-paying jobs in a rustic the place they have no idea the native language. Folks like Faridah Nassanga, a slim lady with a heat however indifferent air.

“We’re actually poor,” Ms. Nassanga mentioned, sitting exterior her one-room concrete house in Kampala. Meals are cooked on a propane burner within the alley beside a trickling sewage gutter. She shares a triple-decker bunk mattress along with her mom and youngsters.

Ms. Nassanga mentioned a buddy launched her in 2019 to an agent from Marphie Worldwide Recruitment Company, whose co-owner, Henry Tukahirwa, not too long ago retired as one in every of Uganda’s highest-ranking law enforcement officials. Ms. Nassanga agreed to maneuver to Saudi Arabia for a job paying about $200 a month.

She discovered her housekeeping job as nice as recruiters had promised. She had her personal room. The lady she labored for typically even helped with chores.

Then in the future, she mentioned, her boss’s husband walked into her room and raped her. Afterward, she mentioned, he kicked and slapped her. He threw her underwear at her as she retreated to the kitchen, Ms. Nassanga mentioned.

When she turned pregnant, Ms. Nassanga’s boss accused her of sleeping with the husband. The Saudi household put her on a airplane again to Uganda, mentioned Abdallah Kayonde, who runs a legal-aid group that’s attempting to get compensation for her.

Ms. Nassanga is aware of her employer’s title however not her telephone quantity. The one data she has are from the recruiting company.

Ruth Karungi, who owns the company along with her husband, the retired police official, mentioned that when Ms. Nassanga confirmed up on the workplace with an toddler, the corporate contacted the Saudi accomplice company, which didn’t reply.

The corporate then notified the Saudi Embassy. “We trusted that they’d deal with the case by way of the right diplomatic channels,” Ms. Karungi mentioned by e-mail.

She mentioned she didn’t know if anybody had adopted up.

Now, Ms. Nassanga is again sharing a one-room house along with her mom, her two older kids and her toddler — a boy with a notably totally different complexion and hair from his siblings.

‘An Necessary Vacation spot Nation’

Saudi Arabia has a wage hierarchy for international employees, with East Africans close to the underside at about $200 to $250 a month.

Through the years, some international locations have fought for higher wages and protections for his or her employees. The Philippines, for instance, negotiated a cope with Saudi Arabia in 2012 that raised wages.

That despatched staffing companies in search of cheaper labor elsewhere.

Few Ugandan employees arrived within the kingdom in 2017, Ugandan authorities information present. 5 years later, the quantity was 85,928.

African governments stood to learn from remittances. Mr. Muli’s committee known as on Kenya in 2019 to “embark on a rigorous marketing campaign to market Saudi Arabia as an necessary vacation spot nation for international employment.”

“The present notion that international employees in Saudi Arabia undergo struggling” wanted “to be corrected,” the committee added.

Mwanakombo Ngao was hospitalized in a psychological establishment after returning house. She has no recollection of what occurred in Saudi Arabia.

The African international locations present a “new and lower-cost providers market,” one in every of Saudi Arabia’s largest staffing companies, Maharah Human Sources Firm, wrote in 2019.

A few of King Faisal’s descendants, by way of a holding firm, have been necessary shareholders in each Maharah and in one other main staffing company, Saudi Manpower Options Firm, or Smasco.

Al Mawarid, one more large staffing firm, additionally has deep authorities ties. Its chairman, Ahmad al-Rakban, was govt director of administration for the Saudi Nationwide Guard. The chief govt, Riyadh al-Romaizan, is chairman of a government-backed business council. Tariq al-Awaji, a former high official on the Inside Ministry, is an organization director. One other board member, till not too long ago, was an official within the Funding Ministry.

In recent times, Al Mawarid has paid about $4 million to amass employees from Macro Manpower, the agency owned by Mr. Nzaire, the brother of Uganda’s president, company filings present.

(East African recruiting companies generate income from per-worker charges from Saudi corporations. These corporations, in flip, get charges from individuals who rent maids.)

Al Mawarid’s chief govt, Mr. al-Romaizan, declined to reply questions.

Attacked With Bleach

Mary Nsiimenta, a single mom with large, mournful eyes, cleaned home for a household with 5 kids in Najran, in southern Saudi Arabia. She mentioned the kids, ages 9 to 18, hit her with a stick and put bleach in her eyes.

(A number of girls informed The Occasions that they had been assaulted with bleach or compelled to soak their fingers in it as punishment.)

In accordance with Ms. Nsiimenta, her employer was stingy along with her wage. After she repeatedly requested to be paid, she mentioned, the household locked her on a third-story rooftop.

As time dragged on, she felt positive she would die there, she recalled.

“The solar was an excessive amount of,” she mentioned. “Sizzling. No meals. I misplaced management.”

She jumped, touchdown exhausting.

“I crawled out like a snake” to the road, she mentioned. Passers-by introduced her to a hospital the place, medical data present, docs repaired her backbone. She reported the abuse to docs and the police, she mentioned, however they informed her to return to work.

Ms. Nsiimenta refused, and the Saudi placement company returned her to Uganda in 2023. In power ache and incontinent, she can not work. Buddies and kinfolk are elevating her kids. “My life is destroyed,” she mentioned.

Buying and selling Abuse for a Sort of Jail

Saudi regulation says that, when a employee must go house, an employer, recruiter or the Saudi authorities is obligated to pay.

“Not at all does a employee bear any monetary accountability for repatriation,” wrote Mr. Goldstein, the Saudi ministry spokesman.

However employees and worker-rights advocates say that laborers are sometimes compelled to pay. These with out cash could be detained.

As a result of visas are tied to employment, employees who go away their jobs can lose their authorized standing. To assist deal with that, the Saudi authorities paid an organization, Sakan, to supply housing and authorized help to international employees in bother.

Hannah Njeri Miriam ended up at a Sakan middle in 2022, a few 12 months after she left Kenya’s Rift Valley for Saudi Arabia.

Ms. Miriam’s employer fired her after a dispute. Jobless and homeless, Sakan was the one place to go. As soon as there, in accordance with her household, the employees mentioned she may go away provided that she paid about $300 for her journey.

She known as house, saying she was being mistreated and underfed. No one may afford to assist. The Kenyan company that had despatched her overseas had gone out of enterprise.

Lastly, her household bought a name from one other lady on the middle. She mentioned Ms. Miriam had tried to flee by way of an air-conditioning opening however had slipped and fallen two tales. A forensic report mentioned that Ms. Miriam had died of head wounds. The Saudi police later mentioned that she died of “congestive cardiac and respiratory failure.” Sakan’s chairman declined to remark.

Mr. Goldstein, the Saudi ministry spokesman, declined to touch upon particular person deaths however mentioned that each case was completely investigated. He didn’t touch upon the inconsistencies between autopsies and police studies and wouldn’t say how many individuals had been arrested or prosecuted in labor circumstances.

Mr. Goldstein mentioned the federal government stopped funding Sakan in 2023. Now, he mentioned, it pays the recruiting company Smasco to run worker-assistance facilities.

Three Kenyan girls spoke to The Occasions from inside a Smasco middle. The ladies, who spoke on the situation of anonymity for worry of retaliation, mentioned that they may not go house except they paid about $400. The corporate didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Returning Residence

As migration to Saudi Arabia surged, studies of deaths and accidents unfold throughout East Africa. Our bodies started arriving. Every story introduced new outrage.

Folks mustn’t have been shocked. The leaders of Kenya and Uganda had ample warning of abuse, but they signed agreements with Saudi Arabia that lacked protections that different leaders demanded.

The Philippines deal in 2012, for instance, assured a $400 month-to-month minimal wage, entry to financial institution accounts and a promise that employees’ passports wouldn’t be confiscated.

Kenya initially demanded related wages, in accordance with a authorities report, however when Saudi Arabia balked, Kenya agreed to a deal in 2015 with no minimal wage in any respect.

The treaty contained little past a promise to ascertain a committee to observe labor points. The fee was by no means fashioned, a authorities report mentioned.

Mr. Mohamed, the Kenyan president’s spokesman, mentioned that the federal government later negotiated $225 month-to-month wages. He mentioned Kenyan employees had been merely not as extremely regarded in Saudi Arabia. “Philippines is ready to dictate the value,” he mentioned.

When Uganda lower its settlement with the Saudi authorities, they made no point out of a minimal wage. The problem of employee mistreatment was properly mentioned on the time. The Saudi ambassador to Uganda even wrote a column in a Ugandan newspaper assailing critics who “offend and abuse the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” by publicizing abuse.

In 2021, a Kenyan Senate committee discovered “deteriorating circumstances” in Saudi Arabia and an “improve in misery calls by these alleging torture and mistreatment.” The committee really useful suspending employee transfers.

When Mr. Ruto was elected president in 2022, although, the marketing campaign to ship employees overseas intensified. His authorities reached a brand new Saudi labor settlement the next 12 months with out a wage improve or substantive new protections.

“It’s a cycle of abuse that nobody is addressing,” mentioned Stephanie Marigu, a Kenyan lawyer who represents employees.

Now, a couple of instances a month, rural Kenyans head to Nairobi to gather a coffin from the airport.

A whole bunch of individuals gathered in September at a village college in southwestern Kenya. They paid respects to Millicent Moraa Obwocha, who had left her husband and younger son behind months earlier.

Her employer sexually harassed and assaulted her, her husband, Obuya Simon Areba, mentioned. Issues bought so unhealthy final summer season, he mentioned, that she requested her Saudi recruiter to rescue her.

A number of days later, her husband bought the decision that she was lifeless. She was 24. The Kenyan authorities attributed her dying to “nerve points.”

Her employer, Abdullah Omar Abdul al-Rahman Hailan, mentioned that Mr. Areba’s account was “deceptive and incorrect” and known as a Occasions reporter “a clown.”

On the funeral, Ms. Obwocha’s physique lay in an open coffin in a white costume and veil.

Beside her was a six-foot-tall {photograph}. In it, she smiles along with her fingers held up in a V. She is standing exterior the airport, brimming with optimism.