Islamabad, Oct 6 (IANS) Three United Nations special rapporteurs have urged Pakistan to protect girls from kidnapping, forced religious conversion and child marriage, stressing that the existing laws in the country have little impact until authorities ensure access to justice and implement them consistently.
The experts made the remarks during a side event of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, jointly organised by advocacy groups Jubilee Campaign and the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ). The UN experts spoke about the alleged kidnapping, forced conversion and marriage of Christian girls to Muslim men, Morning Star News, a US-based independent news service focusing exclusively on the persecution of Christians, reported.
UN special rapporteur on minority issues Nicolas Levrat; special rapporteur on violence against women and girls Reem Alsalem and Katarina Schwarz, the newly appointed special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in persons, participated in the event.
Levrat said that Pakistan, under its international obligations, needs to protect children from forced religious conversion and child marriage. He stated that the impunity surrounding forced religious conversions will not be resolved through new laws or legislation and demanded that religious minorities should have better access to justice in Pakistan, a press statement issued by Jubilee Campaign USA detailed.
In a virtual statement, Schwarz said child marriage can fall within the category of slavery and emphasised that slavery and other forms of exploitation take place in environments, where discrimination occurs, especially against women and girls. She urged Pakistan to take measures and provide “robust and effective protection” to fulfill its obligations, Morning Star News reported.
Reem Alsalem spoke about recent legal reforms in Pakistan, including Punjab’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2026, which raised the minimum marriage age to 18 years for boys and girls and made underage marriage a non-bailable offense. However, she voiced concern over the inconsistent implementation of such laws and spoke about the pressure faced by victims and their families to withdraw complaints.
During the event, the families of the victims shared their ordeal, including the mother of 13-year-old Christian girl Maria Shahbaz, who disappeared from her home in July last year and later told a court that she had willingly converted and married her 30-year-old alleged kidnapped, Shehryar Ahmad.
In a video played during the event, Maria Shahbaz’s mother said, “We don’t know where they are keeping her.” “We have terrible thoughts about what is happening to her,” the report quoted her as saying.
In July, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the Pakistani authorities to end the abduction and forced conversion to Islam of girls belonging to religious minority communities. Citing United Nations data for 2025, the resolution stated that Christian girls account for nearly 25 per cent of cases involving forced religious conversion through marriage.
In the resolution, members of the European Parliament urged Pakistan to establish a comprehensive national framework to eliminate child marriage and “create a national mechanism for handling complaints from families of abducted or forcibly converted girls from minorities,” a report published in The Christian Post stated.
–IANS
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