Calls from a United Nations body for Pakistan to combat forced conversions and marriages and raise the legal age of marriage are welcome, but “meaningful change will depend on enforcement”.
Experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have highlighted that young girls belonging to religious minority groups, including Christians, are often caught in the crosshairs of abusive patterns, and have called for reforms to legislation across the entire nation.
The experts called for the Pakistani state to make forced religious conversion a separate specific offence, crack down on human trafficking and sexual violence, and make 18 the legal age of consent to marry across the entire nation.
