Sonja Dahlmans
Introduction
Every year, between approximately 1,000 and 2,000 minor girls from Pakistan’s religious minority communities are abducted, forcibly married (to a Muslim man), and forced to convert to Islam. The OHCHR expressed its concern regarding the vulnerability of minor girls from non-Muslim families in 2024, stating that: “The exposure of young women and girls belonging to religious minority communities to such heinous human rights violations and the impunity of such crimes can no longer be tolerated or justified.”
These gender-based crimes against the most vulnerable members of Pakistani religious minorities, i.e., minor girls, are also widely recognized by other organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. The United Nations, in a response from 2024, not only condemned the abduction, forced marriage, and forced conversion of minor Hindu and Christian girls in Pakistan but also criticized the impunity of these atrocities, because often, courts side with the abductors.
Although there is, as is demonstrated from the citations above, an increase in awareness among scholars as well as non-governmental organizations and institutions, much of this is still unknown to a wider audience, because gender-based religious persecution is underreported within the media.
According to Michelle Clark, one of the conductors of Aid to the Church in Need’s report “Hear Her Cries” (2023) one of the reasons for this negligence is because these gender specific crimes have something to do with religion; Clark pointed out that: “There is (in the West) a tendency to refrain from passing judgment on other religions and cultures which can quickly lead to dismissal of the problem.”
Religious discrimination
Pakistan has a long record of marginalization of its religious minorities, such as Hindus and Christians. For example, the country is listed as number eight on the annual ranking list of Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors. In addition, roughly speaking, one quarter of all blasphemy accusations are aimed at Christians in Pakistan, while they only make up 1.8 percent of its entire population.
Concerning Pakistan’s Hindu minority population, several human rights advocates, such as Amnesty International, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), and the Minority Rights Group, have documented increasing hate speech, discrimination, and marginalization against Hindus in Pakistan.
The abduction, forced marriage, and forced conversion of Hindu and Christian minor girls are, and should be treated as, part of the wider problem of discrimination against Pakistan’s religious minorities. Islamic law (sharia) often takes precedence over the Constitution of Pakistan, which, at least on paper, guarantees religious freedom for all.
Legal obstacles used against victims of GSRP
An attempt to stop the abduction, forced marriage, and forced religious conversion of Hindu and Christian minor girls was denied when, in 2016, a bill was introduced in Pakistani parliament to stop these gender-based crimes; however, this bill was rejected because the Pakistani Council of Islamic Ideology deemed it “un-Islamic.”
During an interview that I conducted in 2022 with human rights lawyer Tehmina Arora, we discussed the effect of religious discrimination in Pakistan on cases of abduction, forced marriage, and forced Islamization of minor girls. Miss Arora is the Director of Advocacy for Asia at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF International), an organization that advocates for victims of religious discrimination and persecution. According to her, the socio-economic disadvantage of Pakistan’s religious minorities needs to be improved for them to get equal justice.
In practice, this means that, once converted to Islam, girls can not return to their original faith due to the apostasy laws in the country. For example, when fourteen-year-old Christian girl Maira Shahbaz managed to escape her abductor and rapist, he then accused Maira of apostasy, i.e., leaving Islam, which is a capital offence under Pakistan’s religious laws. Consequently, an angry mob of armed men went from house to house looking for the teenage girl.
Similarly, a fifteen-year-old Hindu minor girl, Chanda Maharaj, was abducted, forced to marry a Muslim man, and convert to Islam. During the time of the court case in which her parents tried to prove that Chanda was still a minor, and therefore the marriage should be declared annulled according to Pakistani law, the girl was placed in a shelter home. After a year, the court decided that Chanda should be returned to her abductor, claiming that all evidence provided by her parents was invalid.
These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; many times over, every year, girls and their families are let down by the justice system in Pakistan. Abductors and their allies falsify official birth certificates so they can pretend that a girl is not underage, often with the aid of a Muslim cleric who conducts the marriage contract. In other cases, girls have been pressured to testify that their conversion to Islam was voluntary. And, in many instances, abductors and/or their families have been given custody over a forcibly converted Christian or Hindu minor girl. Under Islamic law (sharia), a non-Muslim cannot be the guardian over a Muslim child; this ruling is misused, through forced religious conversion, to gain and maintain full control over these underage girls, leaving their parents with few possibilities for objection or legal action.
Breeding ground
Other important factors contribute to the problem of gender-based religious persecution in Pakistan. As Azhar (Advance Social Science Archive Journal 2025, 514) has noted regarding recent legislative progress concerning gender-based crimes in Pakistan: “Legislation concerning women, like laws on domestic violence, sexual harassment, and inheritance, is seldom enforced despite signed treaties, leaving women unprotected against violence and abuse.”
To illustrate; according to UNFPA, 56% of all women, regardless of their religious background, that suffered a form of physical or sexual violence, have not sought help or entrusted their experiences to a confidant due to socio-cultural barriers, economic dependency, a lack of information and/or accessibility and the report also mentions a lack of support systems.
Moreover, child marriage in Pakistan remains a serious problem despite the country’s efforts to turn the tide; recently (May 2025), a bill was adopted for the Islamabad region to outlaw child marriage. However, this bill was heavily criticized by the Pakistani Council of Islamic Ideology, which claimed it was “un-Islamic,” which raises the question of whether real change will be possible. Finally, according to annual reports by Sahil, an organization that has been working on child protection since 1999, child abuse in Pakistan is a persistent problem.
All of the above, the high percentage of gender-based crimes, child marriage and abuse, and the difficulties victims of such crimes face, both in the legal system as well as certain social values, contribute to the even weaker position of Pakistan’s minor girls from religious minority communities. On top of that, the honor of women and girls is often violated to shame and humiliate an entire minority community while at the same time these atrocities often remain unknown to a wider audience because parents are often not able to report these cases, and the fact that -contrary to the more violent attacks on religious minorities, such for example in Jaranwala (2023) – gender specific religious persecution (GSRP) is hidden and more complex (Open Doors Gender Report 2020).