Housekeepers from East Africa suffer beatings, starvation and sexual assault in Saudi Arabia. Here’s what else we learned about the cross-border trade in domestic workers.
In most countries, working as a housekeeper or nanny is a relatively safe profession.
Yet as we traveled across Kenya and Uganda, from crowded and poor urban neighborhoods to far-flung farming villages, we heard many variations on the same horror story: Young, healthy women set off for domestic jobs in Saudi Arabia, only to return beaten, scarred or in coffins.
At least 274 Kenyans, nearly all of them women, have died in Saudi Arabia in the past five years. At least 55 died just last year, twice as many as the previous year.
Autopsies only raised more questions. The body of a woman from Uganda showed extensive bruising and signs of electrocution, yet her death was labeled “natural.” We found a surprising number of women who fell from roofs, balconies or, in one case, an opening for an air-conditioner.
How could this be? This was hardly some obscure industry with fly-by-night players. East African women are recruited by the thousands and trained by well-established companies, then sent to Saudi Arabia through a process regulated and approved by the Ugandan, Kenyan and Saudi governments.
Worker advocates have long blamed archaic Saudi labor laws. But we wondered if something else was at play. We spent nearly a year trying to figure it out.
Workers are being sold a dream that, often, becomes a nightmare.
We interviewed more than 90 workers and their families, and carefully analyzed employment contracts whenever we could.
