A Kenyan senator from President William Ruto’s ruling party has accused the government of turning its back on stranded Kenyan mothers and their children in Saudi Arabia. The remarks amount to one of the strongest rebukes from a public official since a New York Times investigation into their ordeal.
The Times reported a week ago that in Saudi Arabia, where a woman can be jailed for giving birth outside marriage, the children of Kenyan single mothers are routinely deprived of birth certificates, medical care and education, in violation of Saudi and international law.
Without birth certificates, these children are relegated to the fringes of society — but they also cannot leave the country. Instead of helping them, Kenyan diplomats often insult the mothers, accuse them of seducing men or leave them trapped in a bureaucratic maze.
The women and children represent a human cost of Kenya’s economic policy, which is built around sending workers abroad to find jobs. The government has known for years that Kenyan housekeepers face beatings, stolen wages, rape and other abuse in Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of women have been killed, with autopsies describing mysterious injuries.
The Times found that Kenya’s politicians, including President Ruto’s family and allies, profit from the staffing agencies that send women abroad.
Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs issued a statement last week saying there were clear “pathways” for the mothers to “regularize their status and procure documentation for their children.” The government suggested that women were not doing enough to help themselves.
Senator Karungo wa Thang’wa visited Saudi Arabia last week and met with unmarried Kenyan mothers and their children who have been stuck in legal limbo, some of them for years. He said many mothers and their children he met, including a woman with an infant only a few weeks old, were sleeping outdoors and had no sense of how to get help.
“The suffering is real,” he said in a statement posted on X late on Saturday. “The neglect is real.” Kenya’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia should be recalled, the senator suggested, saying, “Heads must roll.”
Kenya’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the senator’s remarks.
Even after years of social reforms in Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pregnancy outside marriage remains stigmatized and exists in a legal gray area.
While unmarried mothers from other nations face similar struggles, The Times found that Kenyan women are hit especially hard: berated by their embassy, denied assistance and entangled in paperwork that drags on for years.
Kenya’s foreign ministry said it had “not received such complaints, but would be keen to address them.”
The government has at times required the mothers to take DNA tests to prove maternity, but many of them — including some who eventually made it back to Kenya — told The Times they never received those results.
The ministry, in response to the Times investigation, said that it had conducted DNA testing in 2023, but that the turnout was “underwhelming,” noting that many parents subsequently failed to apply for or collect their children’s birth certificates. (The ministry later told The Times it was unclear whether the DNA testing would be conducted again.)
It also added that officials were unable to reach many mothers by phone or through messages. Officials also said they had repatriated 59 mothers and 73 children to Kenya in collaboration with the Saudi government, though they did not specify a time period.
On Sunday, Senator Karungo pushed back, saying the conditions he saw firsthand sharply diverged from the ministry’s statement.
“The ministry’s statement may be detailed, but it does not match the lived reality of our people in Saudi Arabia,” he said in his own statement, which was posted on X.
He said that some mothers had never been contacted, while many others lived in fear of arrest under Saudi laws that criminalize childbirth outside marriage. Other mothers lived too far from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, or Jeddah, where Kenya has diplomatic offices, he said. And years of inaction have eroded the mothers’ trust in their government, he added, making it inaccurate to portray them as unwilling to register or find a way to get home.
“You cannot blame a stranded mother for being afraid. You cannot blame a homeless woman for lacking transport,” the senator’s statement he said. “You cannot blame victims when the system has already failed them.”
Senator Karungo also condemned the Kenyan Embassy in Riyadh, accusing it of using “proxies” in Saudi Arabia to intimidate Kenyans who speak out about their hardships.
Among the mothers the senator met was a woman named Fanice, who took a DNA test with her daughter Dalia, but never got her results. They have lived at a gas station for months, relying on passers-by for assistance. Senator Karungo gave her daughter 100 Saudi riyals, or $26, she said.
“We still have to wait for answers,” she said in an audio message on Monday afternoon.
Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent for The Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He covers a broad range of issues including geopolitics, business, society and arts.
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