Geneva, Apr 13: A panel of experts from the United Nations on Thursday expressed major dismay at the continuing lack of protection for young women and girls belonging to minority communities in Pakistan, the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner said in a press statement.The panel of experts included Tomoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences; Siobhan Mullally, Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; Nicolas Levrat, Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Nazila Ghanea, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; Dorothy Estrada Tanck (Chair), Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstic, Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi, Working group on discrimination against women and girls.
According to the same UN press release the experts expressed concern that forced marriages and religious conversions of girls from religious minorities which have been coerced are validated by the courts, often invoking religious law to justify keeping victims with their abductors rather than allowing them to return to their parents.
The press release claimed, “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. Christian and Hindu girls remain particularly vulnerable to forced religious conversion, abduction, trafficking, child, early and forced marriage, domestic servitude and sexual violence,” the experts said.
UN experts also highlighted the cases of forced religious conversions.
Calling out the incident of Mishal Rasheed, a young girl who was abducted at gunpoint from her home while preparing for school in 2022. Rasheed was sexually assaulted, forcibly converted to Islam and forced to marry her abductor.
They also noted that on March 13, 2024, a 13-year-old Christian girl was allegedly abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and married to her abductor after her age was recorded as 18 on the marriage certificate.