Woman in Saudi Arabia sentenced to 100 lashes for giving birth outside marriage

A Kenyan mother in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been sentenced to 100 lashes after giving birth outside marriage.Under the Saudi sharia law system, sex outside marriage is a criminal offence. But it is women who are disproportionately targeted, say rights groups, which have condemned the punishment as an “act of violence”.Although many unmarried women give birth in Saudi Arabia, rights groups say the Kenyan mother’s case only came to light because she had been taken to a hospital, which are required to report single women giving birth to the authorities.“Most of them give birth at home, that’s why they aren’t reported,” said Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, founder of Do Bold, a non-profit organisation advocating for migrant workers’ rights in the Gulf.The Kenyan mother, Esther Wanja Muthoni, was a domestic worker recruited to work as housekeeper and nanny in Saudi Arabia. She reportedly became pregnant during a brief relationship with an Egyptian man and said that the child’s father had since left the country.A 2024 Guardian investigation found a number of Kenyan single mothers were abandoned by their children’s fathers out of fear of being arrested for having extramarital sex. After the ruling, which was issued last month, Muthoni told the New York Times she was afraid about not being able to endure the lashes and said: “I don’t deserve this.”The case comes as a planned visit to Saudi Arabia by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, was postponed last week. Alsalem said she had intended to “raise the situation of specific cases during the visit. If the visit does not take place soon, I will do so separately through the established channels that we have as mandate holders.”Maryam Aldossari, acting director at the UK-based rights organisation ALQST (al-qist means “justice” in Arabic), said the ruling was an act of violence and the woman should have been sent back to Kenya and not punished.“It just shows the hypocrisy behind so-called Saudi reform. We know MBS [Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince] has been trying to show the world that Saudi is becoming a modern country that empowers women, yet we see the court sentence a mother to 100 lashes,” said Aldossari.In April 2020, Saudi announced a reform to end flogging as a judicial punishment. However, it only applied to ta’zir offences, where judges have discretion over punishments. Although most flogging sentences fell into this category, flogging remained a possible punishment for certain hudud (fixed punishments under Islamic law) offences, such as alcohol consumption and adultery, ALQST said in a report in 2021.Sivolobova said it had been difficult to help in cases involving Kenyan mothers compared with those from other countries. “I haven’t been able to get help from the Kenyan authorities to support these women,” she said.The Saudi government was approached for comment.