When these girls’ parents seek help from the authorities, Pakistani courts often side with the perpetrators. Pakistan’s culture of religious discrimination and the government’s inability to secure religious freedom endangers its citizens—and young girls often pay the highest price.

The System Enables Abuse

The horrific practice typically occurs in Sindh and Punjab provinces, depending on several adverse factors: Islamic clerics willing to solemnize underage marriages, magistrates who make the marriages legal, and corrupt authorities who refuse to investigate despite obvious criminal activity.

As noted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Pakistani Minorities, police attitudes toward victim families are “not only unsympathetic and condescending but sometimes hostile.” Officers actively discourage Christian and Hindu families from filing formal complaints and accept bribes to stay silent.

A Culture of Discrimination

Pakistan’s failure to protect religious freedom fosters a culture where forced conversion and marriage thrive. Despite constitutional provisions for religious freedom, minorities face systematic persecution. The U.S. State Department designates Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in “particularly severe” religious freedom violations.

Most Pakistani Christians descend from lower-caste Hindus who converted by the thousands. They’re still derogatorily considered “untouchable” or “unclean,” relegated to menial jobs as farmhands, sanitation workers, or street sweepers. This marginalized position leaves non-Muslim girls vulnerable to predators who know targeting religious minorities makes the issue about “defending Islam” rather than enforcing law.

“This issue is worthy of attention from American diplomats and foreign policymakers, and it should become a focus of U.S. human rights diplomacy in South Asia. Pakistan must be called to a higher standard of human rights conditions.”