Born to an unwed mother far from home, this baby cannot leave

Riyadh, 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 43-degree heat. But at night, they are always there, their bodies curled up on the median strip near a petrol station in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

The girl in the red dress is Dalia, a bubbly eight-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.

Kenyan mother Esther and her newborn son, Abudy.Credit: Iman Al-Dabbagh/The New York Times

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 rumour 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.”

Fanice and her daughter, Dalia, in Riyadh. Credit: Iman Al-Dabbagh/The New York Times

Despite a decade of social transformation in Saudi Arabia, unwed pregnancy remains a taboo that exists in a legal grey 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 – recognised 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.

Other mothers stay in Saudi Arabia indefinitely, raising their children in a country where they struggle to access schooling and routine vaccinations.

Dalia plays with a doll her mother found in the rubbish.Credit: Iman Al-Dabbagh/The New York Times

“This life is no good,” says Dalia, who passes her days playing with dolls that her mother collects from the rubbish.

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 Centre 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.

Esther finds shelter with her newborn, Abudy, on a median strip in Riyadh.Credit: Iman Al-Dabbagh/The New York Times

When these women have nowhere else to go, their final harbour is the petrol 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.”

The unlicensed centres that care for children for weeks

Inside a beige apartment building, the laughs and cries of a dozen children can be heard.

A four-year-old boy bounces off the walls. A plump baby sits on a caretaker’s lap. And a three-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 enrol a child. Most of these children have none.

Precious’ mother, Penina Wanjiru Kihiu, came to Saudi Arabia in 2019.

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 labour and immigration regulations, which human rights groups say are a form of “modern-day slavery” – but it is also common.

Pauline Muthoni Kariuki harvests greens from her backyard nar Nairobi, Kenya. Karoiuki says her Saudi employer and his friend raped her. Terrified of having a child in Saudi Arabia, she returned to her family’s home in Kenya and gave birth the day she arrived. She named her son George, but the local children call him Abdullah because of his light complexion.Credit: Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times

Employers and Saudi officials call the vast workforce of women like 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, 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 realised they were pregnant when they arrived in Saudi Arabia.

Pregnant women are entitled to medical care, regardless of their paperwork, the Saudi government centre said. But when an unmarried woman gives birth, the hospital must notify the police of an “illegal pregnancy” Mufareh Asiri, the medical director of the women’s health hospital at King Saud Medical City, said.

So, like many single mothers, Kihiu gave birth at home. After eight hours of labour, Precious arrived on May 17, 2022.

Precious’ day care was run by a matronly proprietor named Agatha. Kihiu would spend days or weeks working and then visit her daughter when she returned. While she was gone, Agatha became Precious’ surrogate mother.

One day in March, Kihiu finished a job and bought diapers for Precious, planning to visit her the next day.

That evening, police raided Kihiu’s housing complex.

She was arrested along with other East African residents, she said, in what she assumes was an immigration crackdown. On March 28, 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”.

Precious would not have been able to leave the country without documents. Several women said that 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.

An almost impossible task

Because the kingdom has no written penal code, the boundaries of permissible behaviour 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 centre said.

In reality, single mothers fall into a bureaucratic abyss. When foreign parents apply for birth certificates, 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, 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.”

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.

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.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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