Unwed Mothers and Their Children Are Trapped in Saudi Arabia
If you do not look closely, it is easy to miss the children. They come and go during the day, a handful of boys and girls seeking refuge from the 110-degree heat. But at night, they are always there, their bodies curled up on the median near a gas station in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
The girl in the red dress is Dalia, a bubbly 8-year-old who learned English from YouTube videos. The baby whimpering for milk is Abudy, born 17 days earlier. Nearby is a wide-eyed toddler, still learning to look both ways before crossing the road.
Their mothers, lying beside them, are Kenyan housekeepers and nannies. Their government encouraged workers like them to find jobs in Saudi Arabia and send their savings back to Kenya. They cleaned the houses and cared for the children of Saudi families.
Like so many other Kenyans employed in Saudi homes, they faced abuse, exploitation and neglect. But other women, when they are desperate, can go home.
These women cannot. They had children outside of marriage. And now they are trapped.
In this conservative Islamic kingdom, where an unmarried mother can be jailed for an “illegal pregnancy,” it is as if their children do not exist. Without identification documents, they are banished to the fringes of society. Yet they cannot leave the country, either.
Police officers, shelter workers and diplomats turned the mothers away. Finally, they came to the gas station. It made no sense, but rumor had it that this was the one place where single mothers could be deported with their children.
“I tried to leave,” says Fanice, 32, Dalia’s mother. “But it’s been impossible.”
Despite a decade of social transformation in Saudi Arabia, unwed pregnancy remains a taboo that exists in a legal gray area. The children of unmarried immigrants face unique perils. They are routinely deprived of birth certificates, medical care and education, in violation of Saudi and international law, a New York Times investigation found.
Kenyan women and children suffer in particular, The Times found, because officials at the Kenyan Embassy berate them, stonewall them or saddle them with years of paperwork to return home. Hundreds of children, and potentially many more, have been left in the lurch — recognized by neither Saudi Arabia nor Kenya.
These children are the victims of an exploitative industry that recruits African women to Saudi Arabia — a pipeline from which Kenyan government officials personally profit through financial interests in staffing agencies. Hundreds of Kenyan women have been killed, and reports of rapes and beatings are common.
For those women who become pregnant, whether from an assault or a relationship, birthing a baby into legal limbo is a final cruelty.
With no path forward, some contemplate giving up their children. At least as wards of the state, they would receive identity documents and an education.
A WhatsApp group for single mothers is filled with anguished pleas:
“Hi guys. If anyone knows the mother of this child, please tell me,” read one message, accompanied by a photograph of a toddler in pink shorts. “She has been abandoned by the road.”
Another woman posted recently, “Anyone here need a new born baby?”
Other mothers stay in Saudi Arabia indefinitely, raising their children in a country where they struggle to access schooling and routine vaccinations.
“This life is no good,” says Dalia, who passes her days playing with dolls that her mother collects from the trash.
All of this flies in the face of a Saudi law that codifies the rights of children — unequivocally, regardless of their immigration status or lineage — to identification documents, medical care and education.
“The law deems a child born to a non-Saudi mother in an irregular or undocumented manner to be affiliated with the mother and to bear her nationality, and a birth certificate is issued for such child accordingly,” the Saudi government’s Center for International Communication said in a statement to The Times.
But the government offers no public pathway for unmarried mothers to register their births. The kingdom has no birthright citizenship, and a top official at a major maternity hospital in Riyadh said that he was unsure how a single mother could get a birth certificate, but that the process would involve the police.
Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
This account is based on interviews with 25 East African women who became pregnant or gave birth in Saudi Arabia, as well as diplomats, educators, human rights activists and Saudi and Kenyan officials. Mothers still in Saudi Arabia are being identified only by first names to protect them from retaliation in the country.
When these women have nowhere else to go, their final harbor is the gas station. Their numbers vary, but usually three or four children are here, darting around or clinging to their mothers.
The newest arrival is Esther, 39, the mother of the newborn Abudy. He was conceived during Esther’s relationship with an Egyptian driver, and she was briefly jailed after giving birth.
Caressing her son’s tiny hands, Esther says she cannot understand why he has to face the consequences of her actions.
“This baby is innocent,” she says. “He knows nothing.”
Children spend weeks away from their mothers in unlicensed day cares.
Inside a beige apartment building, the laughs and cries of a dozen children can be heard past the curtain hung over their playroom door.
A 4-year-old boy bounces off the walls. A plump baby sits on a caretaker’s lap. And a 3-year-old girl sits to fasten her gold Mary Janes, wrestling them onto the wrong feet. Her name is Precious.
This unlicensed day care in Riyadh is one of many that have sprung up to meet the needs of Kenyan single mothers. Children play and sleep here for weeks on end while their mothers work as live-in cleaners, cooks and nannies, returning to see them on their days off.
Licensed schools and nurseries require a birth certificate or another form of identification to enroll a child. Most of these children have none.
Precious’s mother, Penina Wanjiru Kihiu, came to Saudi Arabia in 2019. That year, with Kenya’s unemployment rising, its parliamentary labor committee urged the government to “embark on a rigorous campaign to market Saudi Arabia as an important destination country for foreign employment.”
Ms. Kihiu, now 32, worked for an abusive employer for nine months, she said. When he finally let her quit, she said, he abandoned her, nearly broke, at the airport. Another Kenyan offered shelter and helped her find work as a freelance housekeeper.
Most mothers interviewed by The Times were working freelance when they became pregnant. Leaving their employers violates Saudi labor and immigration regulations, which human rights groups say are a form of “modern day slavery” — but it is also common.
Employers and Saudi officials call the vast work force of women like Ms. Kihiu “runaways.” Kenyan freelancers call themselves by another name: kemboi. The term is inspired by the Kenyan Olympian Ezekiel Kemboi, whose sport is steeplechase racing, in which athletes leap over hurdles.
As a new kemboi, Ms. Kihiu relied on a Nepali taxi driver to ferry her around Riyadh. They began dating, and soon, she said, she missed her period.
Most mothers interviewed by The Times conceived their children during a relationship with another immigrant. Four said that they had been raped. Two said they had not realized they were pregnant when they arrived in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, their mandatory medical exams hadn’t detected their early pregnancies.
Ms. Kihiu’s friends urged her to get an abortion. So did the father, who later told her he had left the country, she said.
Saudi Arabia permits abortions only in limited circumstances. Ms. Kihiu feared that an underground abortion would kill her. She also wanted the baby. She was elated when she found out she was having a girl.
Pregnant women are entitled to medical care, regardless of their paperwork, the Saudi government center said. But when an unmarried woman gives birth, the hospital must notify the police of an “illegal pregnancy,” said Dr. Mufareh Asiri, the medical director of the women’s health hospital at King Saud Medical City.
So, like many single mothers, Ms. Kihiu gave birth at home. After eight hours of labor, Precious arrived on May 17, 2022.
Precious’s day care was run by a matronly proprietor named Agatha, who decorated the walls with handmade posters, including an illustration of the Kenyan flag. Ms. Kihiu would spend days or weeks working and then visit her daughter when she returned. While she was gone, Agatha became Precious’s surrogate mother.
Despite such hardships, many mothers choose to stay in Saudi Arabia, fearing worse prospects back home. Depending on their resources and luck, some build decent lives. They pay inflated fees for private medical care and send their children to informal schools.
The same WhatsApp group that has grim messages about abandoned children is also peppered with joyful ones, including invitations to a baby shower — “Dress code — all white.”
Ms. Kihiu hoped to be so lucky.
Though she was a kemboi and her daughter was born outside of marriage, she felt no need to hide. She and Precious often saw police officers at a park. They never bothered her. An officer once gave them money to buy milk, she said.
One day in March, she finished a job and bought diapers for Precious, planning to visit her the next day.
That evening, the police raided Ms. Kihiu’s housing complex.
She was arrested along with other East African residents, she said, in what she assumes was an immigration crackdown.
“Fate just catches up with you,” she said.
Precious was still at the day care.
Ms. Kihiu said she begged the officers to deport her daughter along with her.
“I banged on the prison doors,” she said.
The authorities agreed to let Agatha bring Precious to the detention center, Ms. Kihiu recalled. But Agatha, fearing arrest — she, too, is a kemboi — said she could not.
On March 28, Ms. Kihiu was deported to Kenya, alone.
The Saudi government did not respond to questions about her case, but said that separating a mother and child was not allowed “under any circumstance.”
Even if Agatha had brought Precious, the little girl would not have been able to leave the country without documents. Several women said that the authorities had denied their pleas to self deport with their children.
In the end, the mothers can leave. Their children cannot.
For Precious, the day care is home now. On a video call with her mother in August, she no longer spoke. “She just looks at you,” Ms. Kihiu said.
Without a birth certificate, leaving the country becomes nearly impossible.
Religious police officers used to stalk the streets of Saudi Arabia searching for unmarried couples. Gender segregation was so strict that men courted women by tossing slips of paper with their phone numbers at them.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler, has loosened social restrictions dramatically over the past decade. Today, people flirt openly in low-lit restaurants and dry nightclubs.
But because the kingdom has no written penal code, the boundaries of permissible behavior are fuzzy. Two unmarried mothers interviewed by The Times said that they had been briefly jailed. Others, including several who gave birth in hospitals, said they had faced no repercussions.
The snag came when they tried to register their children.
On paper, all children in Saudi Arabia are entitled to birth certificates, and parents are obligated to report home births to the authorities, the Saudi government center said.
In reality, single mothers fall into a bureaucratic abyss. When foreign parents apply for birth certificates, the authorities are supposed to “verify that the marital relationship exists.” An absent or uncooperative father can hinder a child’s registration.
Asked how unmarried women could obtain birth certificates at his hospital, Dr. Asiri said it was a “complicated process” involving social workers and the police.
“By the end, she can get it,” he said. “But I’m not sure how.”
Facing a dead end, many mothers turn to their embassies for help.
Countries like the Philippines operate shelters for destitute mothers in Saudi Arabia, guide them through the process of obtaining birth certificates and exit permits for their children, and buy them plane tickets.
Not Kenya.
Several mothers said that workers at the Kenyan Embassy called them prostitutes or accused them of seducing men. Purity Marangu, 37, said that when she arrived, pregnant, at the embassy in 2021 and told staff members there she had been raped, they scolded her for not reporting the incident to them sooner.
After repeated embassy visits yielded no help getting home, she surrendered to the police and asked to be deported.
The police, she said, told her to go to the embassy.
Some mothers received Kenyan birth certificates at the embassy, but could not say why they succeeded. Others could not get them, and similarly had no idea why.
“Our government, I think they don’t care,” said Rose Namusasi, a Kenyan woman who works at a school in Riyadh and has assumed an unofficial role lobbying Kenyan officials on behalf of the mothers.
In recent years, the embassy has required DNA maternity tests before women can go home with their children. But the embassy offered them only once, in 2023, mothers and activists said.
In the United States, court-ordered tests typically take a few weeks. While some women received their results, Ms. Marangu and other mothers have been waiting for years. “It’s like they threw it all away,” she said.
Kenya’s foreign minister, Musalia Mudavadi, told Parliament in April that he knew of 388 children born to Kenyan mothers in Saudi Arabia. He said the embassy had collected hundreds of DNA samples, as a way to protect the children.
Some mothers told The Times they had tried to send their children home with friends or strangers so they could stay and keep working.
“There is a worry that some people may be involved in child trafficking,” he said.
He did not explain why many DNA test results never arrived. Diplomats from several other embassies said that they confirm maternity through other methods, including interviews and observation.
After The Times submitted questions to the Kenyan government, several mothers said there was suddenly renewed activity around their cases, with the government promising new DNA tests soon.
In the end, there is a gas station.
None of the mothers seemed to know who had arrived there first, or when.
Their paths there had differed. Beatrice Nasimiyu could not make ends meet on her meager salary while caring for twins.
Fanice and her daughter, Dalia, took DNA tests but never got the results.
For Dorcas, the last straw was when another Kenyan woman she was staying with tried to coerce her into sex work, then kicked her out when she refused.
In distress, all had been guided by someone who told the same story: If you have a child, and want to be deported, go to the gas station in the southern Riyadh neighborhood of Manfooha.
Esther arrived in September, weak and confused after giving birth to Abudy.
She had been legally employed as a maid-for-hire by Maharah Human Resources, a Saudi corporation with a market capitalization of more than $650 million and major American shareholders, through index funds, that include BlackRock and Morgan Stanley. (Both declined to comment.)
Working in a small town north of Riyadh, Esther formed a relationship with an Egyptian driver. She became pregnant and gave birth in Maharah staff housing. When a supervisor found them, she took them to a hospital, Esther said.
There, the police detained her and transferred her to Riyadh, she said, where officers questioned her about her pregnancy. They released her and told her to call a friend, she said.
Esther knew no one in Riyadh. She spent days sleeping outside with Abudy, struggling to produce breast milk because of hunger, while pleading for help from every authority she could find.
She visited one of her employer’s offices but was turned away and sent to the Kenyan Embassy, she said, where the staff said DNA tests could not be offered for at least a month.
So Esther turned up at a shelter for female migrant workers awaiting deportation. But the staff said she could not enter with a baby. The shelter regularly denies entrance to women with children, several mothers said.
Saudi Logistic Services Company, which runs the shelter, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did her employer, Maharah.
“You are the people who are supposed to help me,” Esther remembers thinking. “What do you expect me to do?”
A taxi driver told her about the gas station.
The other mothers had set up a small encampment on a tree-lined median. When Esther arrived, Fanice befriended her and Dorcas gave her diapers.
The cashier at the station’s minimart charges their phones for free. Passers-by sometimes bring food, water and clothing. That is how Dalia got her red dress.
The story about getting deported from the gas station turned out to be a myth. Fanice flagged down police cars, pleading to be arrested, she said.
“‘Did you come here to work or to give birth?’” Ms. Nasimiyu remembers one officer asking her. “‘Stay there and let the sun burn you.’”
After The Times inquired about Esther’s case, a Maharah employee called her, asked where she was and promised to send a driver. She and Abudy could come to staff housing.
As she packed her things, Esther felt a mixture of relief and worry. She had no idea how they would get home to Kenya.
But at least they would have somewhere to sleep that night.
When she finished packing, she waited on a stained mattress. Trucks rumbled past.
“Go to sleep,” Esther urged her baby. She laid Abudy over her knees and smoothed his black hair. Heat rash was spreading across his back.
The driver did not come. Abudy did not sleep. Exhausted, she lay back and cradled him against her chest, jiggling him gently.
Finally, her ride arrived. The driver was confused. He had gone to the location he was sent, but he figured he was in the wrong place.
Why would a woman and a baby be at a gas station?
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প্রকাশিত: 2025-11-10 16:00:00
উৎস: www.nytimes.com
