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New Delhi, Oct 23 (IANS) The kidnapping, forced conversion and marriage of minor Hindu and Christian girls in Pakistan has emerged as one of South Asia’s most serious human rights crises.
Beneath the political narratives of reform and international cooperation lies a grim reality: minority girls continue to disappear, their identities erased, and their families silenced.
This ongoing tragedy challenges the credibility of global commitments to gender equality and human rights.
data-supported reality
A recent report titled ‘Pakistan: Gender-based violence against minor girls of Hindus, Sikhs and Christians’ published by the Global Hindu Temple Network presents verified data on hundreds of cases involving abduction and forced conversion of minor girls between 2021 and 2025.
The report highlights how religious identity increases gender vulnerability in Pakistan, where girls from Hindu and Christian communities are often abducted from their homes, forcefully converted and married to much older men.
Data shows that most of the victims are below 16 years of age, and in more than 70 percent of the documented cases, the police either refused to file a First Information Report (FIR) or later vilified them under pressure. In several instances, victims were presented in court claiming to have “voluntarily converted”, a story that was often extracted under duress.
In Sindh and Punjab, the two provinces with the highest number of recorded cases, the link between religious extremism and patriarchal dominance perpetuates a climate of fear.
The report also notes a worrying institutional apathy, where the state and law enforcement agencies not only fail to protect victims but, in some cases, facilitate perpetrators. This impunity perpetuates the cycle of fear, forcing minority families into silence or migration.
Raising issues on global forums
Taking inspiration from these findings, Mohinder Gulati, President of the Global Hindu Temple Network America, recently raised this issue during the World Bank Civil Society Organization (CSO) Forum and in communication with the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
She questioned how Pakistan continues to receive billions of dollars in development funds while ignoring gross violations of the fundamental rights of its minority girls.
This reality also raises questions about Pakistan’s commitments to international conventions on the rights of women and children, including CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Mohinder Gulati’s intervention highlighted a serious paradox: while international institutions publicly advocate gender equality, their funding practices often fail to take into account structural discrimination in recipient countries.
If gender justice remains limited to metrics and not moral accountability, the essence of “inclusive development” loses meaning.
silence becomes complicity
Pakistan’s treatment of its minorities is not an isolated domestic issue. This is an indicator of systemic gender injustice. The absence of global outrage reflects a troubling hierarchy in human rights advocacy, where victims’ beliefs determine the urgency of response.
International organizations cannot claim moral leadership by turning a blind eye to the abduction and persecution of young girls on the basis of religion.
Development assistance that ignores such abuses is not powerful; it enables. Funds allocated for women empowerment and education cannot absolve a state that denies the right to dignity and security to its minorities.
As the report underlines, unless justice for these girls becomes part of the gender dialogue, every statement on “equality and inclusion” will ring hollow.
Call for moral and institutional accountability
This issue demands more than diplomatic caution; This requires moral clarity. The World Bank and IMF should review their gender policy enforcement in countries like Pakistan, ensuring that funding aligns with concrete progress on human rights standards.
Monitoring should go beyond token representation and include independent audits of gender-related violations, particularly those affecting minorities.
Silence on abducted Hindu and Christian girls is not just Pakistan’s failure; This is a failure of global conscience. As long as institutions measure progress through numbers rather than justice, aid will remain an accomplice to oppression.
(Dr Vinay Nalwa is co-author of the report “Pakistan: Gender-based violence against minor girls from Hindus, Sikhs and Christians”, published by the Global Hindu Temple Network.)
–IANS
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