Kenyan domestic worker sentenced to 100 lashes in Saudi Arabia

A Kenyan mother in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been sentenced to 100 lashes after giving birth outside marriage, The Guardian reports. The woman, Esther Wanja Muthoni, was a domestic worker recruited to work as a housekeeper and nanny in Saudi Arabia. She reportedly became pregnant during a brief relationship with an Egyptian man and said that the child’s father had since left the country.

Under the Saudi sharia law system, sex outside marriage is a criminal offence. Rights groups say women are disproportionately targeted and have condemned the punishment as an “act of violence”.

Horses Media reports that a court in Riyadh sentenced Esther Wanja Muthoni, 40 years old, to 100 lashes and six months in prison after it was established that she gave birth outside marriage in the country. The report says the sentence was issued in October 2026 and that she was taken to a hospital, where her condition was discovered by her employer, who then reported her to the police.

The Guardian reports that after the ruling, which was issued last month, Muthoni told the New York Times she was afraid about not being able to endure the lashes and said: “I don’t deserve this.”

Maryam Aldossari, acting director at the UK-based rights organisation ALQST, said the ruling was an act of violence and the woman should have been sent back to Kenya and not punished.

“It just shows the hypocrisy behind so-called Saudi reform. We know MBS [Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince] 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,” said Aldossari.

Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, founder of Do Bold, a non-profit organisation advocating for migrant workers’ rights in the Gulf, said: “Most of them give birth at home, that’s why they aren’t reported.” She also said she had not been able to get help from the Kenyan authorities to support these women.

In April 2020, Saudi announced a reform to end flogging as a judicial punishment. However, it only applied to ta’zir offences, where judges have discretion over punishments. Although most flogging sentences fell into this category, flogging remained a possible punishment for certain hudud offences, such as alcohol consumption and adultery, ALQST said in a report in 2021.

The case comes as a planned visit to Saudi Arabia by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, was postponed last week. Alsalem said she had intended to “raise the situation of specific cases during the visit. If the visit does not take place soon, I will do so separately through the established channels that we have as mandate holders.”

Sources

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