“No Response Yet”: Silence on grave human rights violations Surrounding Forced Religious Conversions and Child Marriage of Minority Girls

Pakistan came under intense scrutiny at a UN Human Rights Council side-event on Friday, October 2, where top international experts and human rights rapporteurs slammed the severe gaps in enforcing domestic child protection laws, widespread judicial bias, and the unchecked abduction and forced conversion of minority girls.

Speaking during the panel titled Concordia 1, UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues Professor Nicolas Levrat warned that new legislation alone will not resolve the crisis surrounding forced conversions and underage marriages. He pointed out that while Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, enforcement remains deeply broken due to institutional bias toward the dominant religious group.

Highlighting cases where families were forced to bounce from court to court without remedy, Prof. Levrat cautioned against blanket bans on forced religious conversions—noting that internationally, such specific laws are often weaponized against religious minorities. He instead urged Pakistani authorities to focus on technical cooperation, police training, and dismantling systemic bias within the legal pipeline.

The panel featured testimonies from families of abducted Christian girls, including 13-year-old Maria Shahbaz, who remains in the custody of her 30-year-old abductor despite years of legal appeals. Human rights advocate Joseph Janssen, representing the Jubilee Campaign, detailed court proceedings where defence lawyers argued that converted minors could not be returned to their Christian families under the pretext of apostasy laws, effectively overriding basic child protection frameworks.

In addition, legal experts online raised concerns over how child marriage directly maps to contemporary forms of slavery:

• Slavery Frameworks: Dr. Katarina Schwarz, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, stressed that child marriage constitutes exploitation and state obligation requires preventative, effective protection rather than inaction.

• Provincial Gaps: UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Reem Alsalem acknowledged the passage of Punjab’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2026—which set the legal marriage age at 18 and made cohabitation with a minor child abuse—but cited deeply inconsistent judicial application and severe police pressure on victims’ families to withdraw complaints.

• Judicial Delay: Christophe Foltzenlogel of the European Centre for Law and Justice criticized the disproportionate focus on protecting property over human lives, contrasting the handling of minor abductions with high-pressure blasphemy trials involving minors such as Shahzad Masih.

Panellists noted that formal UN communications regarding systemic discrimination against non-Muslim women and girls in Pakistan have so far yielded no official response from Pakistani authorities, calling on Islamabad to move beyond symbolic commitments and ensure immediate protective custody for victims.

According to data from Jubilee Campaign’s Stolen Girls report presented at the session, the crisis is striking increasingly younger victims. The study documented over 210 cases of minor Christian girls abducted across Pakistan, revealing that the average age of victims is just 12.8 years old.