My colleagues on the investigative team are writing on what they uncovered during their yearlong investigation into the deaths of hundreds of Kenyan domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. It’s a compelling story about how government corruption has let down the women who leave Kenya to make a better life for their families, and I hope you’ll read it.
But first, we want to bring you the latest news on the attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, that killed at least 15 people.
An attack targeting Jews in Australia
At least 15 people were killed yesterday by gunmen at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Australian officials called the shooting a terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community. One suspect was killed, and another was wounded and taken into custody.
Hundreds of people had gathered at Bondi, Australia’s best-known beach, for the event. Children were playing as music and bubbles filled the air. Then gunshots ripped through the celebration. Witnesses said the shooting lasted about 10 minutes. More than three dozen people were wounded.
The two gunmen opened fire from a footbridge. At one point, a bystander wrestled away one gunman’s weapon, according to verified videos and witness accounts. These maps and videos show how the attack unfolded.
While mass shootings are rare in Australia, the Jewish community there was already on edge, after enduring a series of alarming antisemitic attacks. After Israel, Australia has the world’s highest concentration of Holocaust survivors.
A lucrative, deadly trade
By Justin Scheck and Abdi Latif Dahir
This year, we uncovered a sobering statistic. More than 250 Kenyan workers, most of them women working as housekeepers, have died in Saudi Arabia in recent years.
These were young women, working in seemingly safe jobs. Yet autopsies described electrocution burns, broken ribs, mysterious falls. One woman was found dead in a rooftop water tank. Documents blamed natural causes. Some who made it home described having been raped, burned, beaten, starved or locked indoors.
All of this wasn’t exactly new — journalists and human rights groups have reported on the abuse of workers in the kingdom for more than a decade — but the scale was shocking. The Saudi government had promised reform. Why, we wondered, was the number of deaths still going up?
What we found defied our expectations. We thought the underlying reasons for these abuses would lie in Saudi Arabia. And it certainly remains true that workers there can be abused with no legal recourse or help from the authorities.
But we found that the problems begin in Kenya, with a government that’s desperate to revive its economy by sending workers abroad and, as we’d uncover over a year of investigation, is riddled with officials who make money by facilitating that process.
Saudi Arabia is the top destination, and Kenya’s government has made it easier, cheaper and faster for Kenyans to find work there — with dire consequences.
Who profits off the labor pipeline?
Kenya is trying to fix an unemployment crisis so deep that young people have been braving police bullets to protest in the streets. President William Ruto has decided to solve the problem by sending millions of workers to wealthier countries.
In Saudi Arabia, even families of modest means have live-in help, and other countries, including the Philippines, have been sending workers there for decades. They have also encountered abuse, and those countries have taken measures to address it.
Ruto’s government, however, saw an opportunity to try to undercut other countries. He has positioned Kenyan labor as among the cheapest on the market. Under an agreement with the Saudi government, Kenyan maids are paid about 40 percent less than their Filipino counterparts, and have few of their protections, like rescue hotlines.
But, as we’d discover, Kenya’s economic strategy intersects with another issue in the country: politicians’ mixing of private and government interests.
Using government and corporate documents in Kenya, we uncovered the ways Ruto’s family and political allies are profiting off the labor pipeline. We found that top lawmakers own staffing companies that send women abroad; at least 10 percent of Kenya’s manpower companies are owned by politicians or politically connected figures. Ruto’s wife and daughter are the largest shareholders of the industry’s major insurance company.
The cheaper Kenyan workers are to hire, and the more minimal their protections, the more money the recruiting companies and their politician owners make. The government has effectively capped housekeeping salaries at just over $260 a month. It provides no safety net for women who end up unpaid or abused.
Ruto’s government last year rolled back training requirements that were intended to protect workers. Industry leaders told us that they’d lobbied to kill the requirements because they would have cut into company profits.
Over the course of our reporting, Ruto’s office defended labor migration as beneficial to the economy and said they took steps to protect workers. The government’s top spokesman, who also owns a staffing company, did not respond to a request for comment.
Blamed for their own abuse
Everywhere we looked, people who were supposed to protect workers were instead profiting off them. Government officials and industry leaders alike blamed Kenyan women for their own abuse, saying they had been beaten for being ignorant, lazy or rude. Rape accusations were dismissed as women being seductive.
The country’s most prominent industry lobbyist told us that Kenyan women were like “dogs” who were the property of their employers. The nation’s labor secretary told us that Kenyan women were abused in Saudi Arabia because they had bad attitudes.
Over the past year, we’ve been all across Kenya. We’ve been to 40 of 47 counties, meeting hundreds of women. What stands out, looking back, is how little they resemble the caricature that their government has drawn of them.
Ruto, his family and his allies effectively capitalized on the ambition of some of the most enterprising workers in their communities. Many of these women had finished high school. Some had been trained as teachers or chefs.
They all knew there were dangers in Saudi Arabia. But they were the kind of people willing to take a big risk to pull their family out of poverty.
When their government promised higher wages in Saudi Arabia, they took the leap. Too often, they also paid the price.
To read more, start with the first piece in our series.
OTHER NEWS
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A top Hamas commander, Raed Saad, was killed on Saturday by an Israeli strike in Gaza.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine was willing to compromise on certain issues, such as giving up immediate hope of joining NATO, in exchange for strong security guarantees.
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Federal agents detained a suspect in connection with a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island on Saturday, which killed two students and wounded nine others.
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Judges in Hong Kong will hand down a verdict today in the national security trial of the media tycoon Jimmy Lai.
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Trump vowed to retaliate against the Islamic State after an attack in Syria killed two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter.
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A left-wing candidate and a conservative are facing off in Chile’s presidential runoff vote.
SPORTS
Football: Lionel Messi’s appearance at a stadium in India ended in chaos.
Formula 1: How do top drivers avoid jet lag? Managing sleep is crucial.
COUPLE OF THE DAY
Mayar Kabaja and Hatem Saadallah
— The pair went on their first date in Gaza City 10 days before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Saadallah and his family evacuated to Egypt, and the two have not been able to see each other since. They recently married remotely.
MORNING READ
With dreadlocks and a silver nose ring, Sunniva Gylver, who heads the Lutheran diocese of Oslo, does not look like a typical bishop. But her version of evangelism is drawing attention.
In an effort to open the Church of Norway to as many people as possible, she has introduced yoga services, started a philosophy cafe and raised the rainbow flag over the Oslo Cathedral to celebrate Pride Week. Her approach is successfully attracting younger worshipers. Read more.
AROUND THE WORLD
The festive food they’re cooking up … in Nigeria
It’s Detty December in Lagos — a monthlong celebration that closes out the year with food, festivals, art shows, live music and homecomings for many in the Nigerian diaspora. (We’ll be bringing you more from the scene later this month.)
One of the best meals to enjoy during this period, at food stalls and family kitchens across the sprawling city, is ọbẹ̀ onírù, also known as designer stew (a nod to the care that Nigerians put into its preparation).
To Ozoz Sokoh, the author of the Nigerian cookbook “Chop Chop,” ọbẹ̀ onírù embodies the best of what a great Nigerian dish can do. Every element contributes to the balance of the whole, from the small bits of meat to the deep-red palm oil that coats the ingredients. So dive into Detty December, and make the stew for yourself. — Yewande Komolafe, a cooking writer and columnist for The New York Times.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Read: The notebooks of Albert Camus have been collected in a single volume for the first time.
Watch: Bi Gan’s “Resurrection” tracks a chameleonlike character across a century’s worth of adventures.
Cope: Here’s a head-to-toe guide to the many unexpected symptoms of menopause.
Travel: Spend 36 hours in Dresden, Germany.
WHERE IS THIS?
Where is this Christmas market?
TIME TO PLAY
Here are today’s Spelling Bee, Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here.
You’re done for today. See you tomorrow! — Katrin
Justin Scheck and Abdi Latif Dahir were our guest writers today.
We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at [email protected].
Katrin Bennhold is the host of The World, the flagship global newsletter of The New York Times.
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