Peer-reviewed article
Conversion without consent. The abduction, forced religious conversions, and child marriage of faith minority girls in Pakistan
Jubilee Campaign, Voice for Justice ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This report examines the abduction, forced religious conversion, and child marriage of girls from religious minority communities in Pakistan. It argues that despite international human rights protections for freedom of religion, inadequate enforcement of existing laws enables Muslim men to kidnap minority faith girls and coerce their conversion to Islam, followed by marriage. The report highlights how weak legal implementation and discriminatory legislation create an environment where such abuses occur with impunity.
Key points
- International human rights law protects freedom of religion through worship, observance, practice and teaching, but does not protect coercive conversion
- Coercive conversion methods include bribery, promises of social benefits, and exploitation of inexperience, trust, need, low intellect or naïvety
- Pakistan's negligible implementation of existing legislation emboldens abduction and forced conversion
- Girls from faith minority communities are targeted for abduction, forced religious conversion, and child marriage
- Existing legislation in Pakistan is already deficient or discriminatory in essence
Limitations
The document provides a legal and human rights analysis but does not present empirical data, prevalence statistics, or detailed case evidence to quantify the scale of the problem. It does not evaluate any intervention or provide comparative data.
Abstract
International human rights law guarantees individuals the right to freedom of religion or belief via “worship, observance, practice and teaching”. Freedom of religion permits peaceful evangelism; it does not, protect acts of coercive conversion through bribery, promises of social benefits, or exploitation of another’s “inexperience, trust, need, low intellect or naïvety”. In the predominantly Muslim population in Pakistan, conversion to Islam is encouraged, and the negligible implementation of legislation – albeit already deficient or discriminatory in essence – further emboldens Muslim men to kidnap girls from minority faith communities, whom they then subject to forced religious conversions and child marriages.