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 staff.

March 16, 2025

On any given day in Kenya, dozens, if not a whole bunch of girls 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 purpose 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 longer term.

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.

At the least 274 Kenyan staff, principally girls, have died in Saudi Arabia previously 5 years — a unprecedented determine for a younger work drive doing jobs that, in most nations, are thought-about extraordinarily protected. At the least 55 Kenyan staff died final yr, twice as many because the earlier yr.

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

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 might demand thorough investigations into employee deaths, strain the federal government to barter higher protections from Saudi Arabia or go 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, stated that her Saudi boss had seized her passport, declared that he had “purchased” her and steadily withheld meals. When she referred to as the staffing company for assist, she stated, an organization consultant informed her, “You may swim throughout the Purple Sea and get your self again to Kenya.”

In Kenya, Uganda and Saudi Arabia, a New York Instances investigation discovered, highly effective folks have incentives to maintain the movement of staff shifting, regardless of widespread abuse. Members of the Saudi royal household are main buyers in businesses that place home staff. Politicians and their relations in Uganda and Kenya personal staffing businesses, too.

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

Mr. Muli’s labor committee, for instance, has turn into a distinguished voice encouraging staff to go abroad. The committee has at occasions 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 towards our will,” one girl stated on the video. The corporate that despatched her overseas is owned by Sedrack Nzaire, an official with Uganda’s governing celebration who’s recognized in Ugandan media because the brother of the president, Yoweri Museveni.

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

Kenya and Uganda are deep in a yearslong economic slump, and remittances from international staff are a big supply of earnings. Even after different nations negotiated offers with Saudi Arabia that assured employee protections, East African nations missed alternatives to do the identical, information 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 businesses.”

Undeterred, Kenya’s president, William Ruto, says he desires to ship as much as half a million workers to Saudi Arabia within the coming years. One in all his prime 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, stated that labor migration benefited the economic system. He stated the federal government was taking steps to guard staff, together with removing unlicensed recruiting companies which can be extra more likely to have shoddy practices. He stated 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 embody a not too long ago retired senior police official and Maj. Gen. Leopold Kyanda, a former army attaché to america.

Recruiting firms work carefully with Saudi businesses which can be equally nicely linked. Descendants of King Faisal have been among the many largest shareholders in two of the most important businesses. A director of a Saudi authorities human rights board serves as vice chairman of a serious staffing company. So does a former inside minister, an Funding Ministry official and several other authorities advisers.

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

A Kenyan housekeeper, Eunice Achieng, referred to as dwelling 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 stated. Saudi well being officers stated 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 stated that her boss had raped her after which despatched her dwelling pregnant and broke.

In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa stated that when he discovered his spouse had died in Saudi Arabia, her employer there gave him a alternative: 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 would like the physique of my spouse,” Mr. Waiswa stated.

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 staff are in Saudi Arabia at this time, the Saudi authorities says. Most of them are girls who prepare 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 Instances interviewed greater than 90 staff and relations of those that died, and uncovered another excuse that issues don’t change. Utilizing employment contracts, medical information and autopsies, reporters linked deaths and accidents to staffing businesses and the individuals who run them. What turned clear was that highly effective folks revenue off the system because it exists.

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

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

He stated the federal government had raised fines for abuse and made it simpler for staff to give up. He stated home laborers have been capped at 10-hour workdays and have been assured sooner or later off per week. He stated the federal government now requires employers to pay their maids by way of a web-based system and can sooner or later 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 stated.

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

“We get complaints each day,” he stated.

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 folks determined, and bold, sufficient to go away their households for low-paying jobs in a rustic the place they have no idea the native language. Folks like Faridah Nassanga, a slim girl with a heat however indifferent air.

“We’re actually poor,” Ms. Nassanga stated, sitting exterior her one-room concrete dwelling 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 kids.

Ms. Nassanga stated a good friend launched her in 2019 to an agent from Marphie Worldwide Recruitment Company, whose co-owner, Henry Tukahirwa, not too long ago retired as certainly one 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 girl she labored for generally even helped with chores.

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

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

Ms. Nassanga is aware of her employer’s identify however not her cellphone quantity. The one information she has are from the recruiting company.

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

The corporate then notified the Saudi Embassy. “We trusted that they might tackle the case by way of the right diplomatic channels,” Ms. Karungi stated by e mail.

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

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

‘An Essential Vacation spot Nation’

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

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

That despatched staffing businesses searching for cheaper labor elsewhere.

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

African governments stood to learn from remittances. Mr. Muli’s committee referred to 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 staff in Saudi Arabia undergo struggling” wanted “to be corrected,” the committee added.

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

The African nations present a “new and lower-cost companies market,” certainly one of Saudi Arabia’s largest staffing businesses, 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, yet one more huge 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 prime 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 accumulate staff from Macro Manpower, the agency owned by Mr. Nzaire, the brother of Uganda’s president, company filings present.

(East African recruiting businesses generate income from per-worker charges from Saudi firms. These firms, 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 huge, mournful eyes, cleaned home for a household with 5 kids in Najran, in southern Saudi Arabia. She stated the kids, ages 9 to 18, hit her with a stick and put bleach in her eyes.

(A number of girls informed The Instances that they have been assaulted with bleach or pressured 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 stated, 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 stated. “Sizzling. No meals. I misplaced management.”

She jumped, touchdown onerous.

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

Ms. Nsiimenta refused, and the Saudi placement company returned her to Uganda in 2023. In persistent ache and incontinent, she can’t work. Buddies and relations are elevating her kids. “My life is destroyed,” she stated.

Buying and selling Abuse for a Kind of Jail

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

“On no account does a employee bear any monetary duty for repatriation,” wrote Mr. Goldstein, the Saudi ministry spokesman.

However staff and worker-rights advocates say that laborers are sometimes pressured to pay. These with out cash will be detained.

As a result of visas are tied to employment, staff who go away their jobs can lose their authorized standing. To assist tackle that, the Saudi authorities paid an organization, Sakan, to offer housing and authorized help to international staff in hassle.

Hannah Njeri Miriam ended up at a Sakan heart in 2022, a couple of yr 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 line with her household, the employees stated she might go away provided that she paid about $300 for her journey.

She referred to as dwelling, saying she was being mistreated and underfed. No one might 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 girl on the heart. She stated Ms. Miriam had tried to flee by way of an air-conditioning opening however had slipped and fallen two tales. A forensic report stated that Ms. Miriam had died of head wounds. The Saudi police later stated 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 stated that each case was totally 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 instances.

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

Three Kenyan girls spoke to The Instances from inside a Smasco heart. The ladies, who spoke on the situation of anonymity for worry of retaliation, stated that they might not go dwelling except they paid about $400. The corporate didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Returning Dwelling

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 shouldn’t have been stunned. 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 staff’ passports wouldn’t be confiscated.

Kenya initially demanded comparable wages, in line 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 shaped, a authorities report stated.

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

When Uganda lower its settlement with the Saudi authorities, they made no point out of a minimal wage. The problem of employee mistreatment was nicely 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 situations” in Saudi Arabia and an “improve in misery calls by these alleging torture and mistreatment.” The committee beneficial suspending employee transfers.

When Mr. Ruto was elected president in 2022, although, the marketing campaign to ship staff overseas intensified. His authorities reached a brand new Saudi labor settlement the next yr with no wage improve or substantive new protections.

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

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

A whole lot 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, stated. Issues bought so unhealthy final summer season, he stated, that she requested her Saudi recruiter to rescue her.

A couple 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, stated that Mr. Areba’s account was “deceptive and incorrect” and referred to as a Instances reporter “a clown.”

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