Pakistan has devolved into a hunting ground for minority youth, where non-Muslim children are systematically stolen from their families, stripped of their faith, and subjected to horrific abuse under the blind eye of the law.
Zarvia Pervaiz, a 12-year-old Christian girl from Punjab Province, represents just one of numerous documented victims subjected to abduction, forced marriage, and the violent renunciation of their faith.
In April 2022, Pervaiz was abducted by a 40-year-old man and his wife. Subjected to threats against her family, she remains trapped in the custody of her abductors after a domestic court dismissed the case and ignored evidence of duress.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) highlights Pervaiz's case:
The couple, who had been taken in by Pervaiz’s family during a financial hardship, lured Pervaiz away from her home and subjected her to psychological coercion, including threats of violence against her family, if she did not comply with their demands. When Pervaiz’s family filed a first information report (FIR), the couple was detained, and Pervaiz, rather than being kept in a children’s shelter, was confined in a police holding cell with one of her abductors.
In May 2022, a court temporarily discharged the kidnappers after police authorities recommended that they not be charged. During the proceedings, the court denied Pervaiz legal counsel and accepted her verbal testimony that she converted and married out of her own free will, despite her being a minor and evidence that her statement was made under duress. The court also failed to perform a mandatory medical examination for suspected victims of kidnapping or trafficking.
In August 2022, Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan of the Rawalpindi Bench of the Lahore High Court dismissed the case in minutes, stating, "The girl is 12, she is married, and she did it out of her free will." Among the evidence not considered was a recorded phone call between Zarvia and her brother after her abduction, in which she said, "They are saying I have to do as they say, otherwise, they will kill my brothers."
Multiple organizations — including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), the United Nations, and the Movement for Solidarity and Peace — estimate that around 1,000 minority children are abducted every year.
The victims are disproportionately young girls — frequently minors between the ages of 12 and 18 — belonging to impoverished Hindu and Christian communities.
According to recent UN expert reports, approximately 80% of these minority abductions occur in the Sindh province, which has the country's highest concentration of Hindu families.
Victims are taken from their homes, workplaces, or streets, subjected to forced conversion to Islam certified by local mosques, and immediately married to their abductors or sold.
Families face severe hurdles when seeking justice. Local police frequently refuse or delay registering the crimes, choosing instead to write them off as runaway cases resulting from family disputes. This delay gives abductors time to relocate victims or secure fraudulent legal paperwork, making rescue incredibly difficult.
If cases reach the courts, abductors often present falsified birth certificates or argue that the girl converted and married of her own free will under Sharia law definitions of maturity.
Local courts frequently side with the abductors, viewing the case strictly through a lens of "religious choice" rather than child abduction. Courts then validate the marriages or return girls to their captors.
When expanding beyond minority-focused forced marriages, the numbers escalate dramatically. Broader human rights data reveals that the overall child abduction and disappearance crisis in Pakistan is much larger. Independent child protection NGOs and state data show that thousands of children — both boys and girls — go missing or are abducted every year due to a combination of trafficking, forced labor, beggar mafias, and ransom.
According to data compiled by the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC), a total of 17,348 sexual crimes against children were registered nationwide in 2025 alone.
Official performance reports from Lahore (Punjab Capital) revealed that 129 children were registered as kidnapped in just the first three months of 2025.
Sahil, a child rights organization, reported 1,914 child abuse cases in the first half of 2026 alone, which included 558 confirmed abductions and 101 missing children.
Last month, the USCIRF issued an update on the religious freedoms situation in Pakistan:
In 2026, the Pakistani government continued to uphold forced conversion cases involving Sikh, Hindu and Christian girls. In March, for example, a Federal Constitutional Court ruled that a 2025 marriage between a 12-year-old Christian girl, Maria Shahbaz, and a 30-year-old Muslim man accused of kidnapping her was legal.
In another case, a Muslim man allegedly abducted an 18-year-old Christian girl, Neha Faqir, from a sewing center and forced her to convert to Islam. Her family alleges that authorities delayed in issuing a police report, known as a First Information Report (FIR), and did not initially act on the complaint. While various laws, including the Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Ordinance 2026, establish the legal marriage age at 18 for men and women, it does not include provisions to address forced conversion. As a result, perpetrators of forced conversions still manage to evade criminal charges and garner support from judges. These criminals typically use fabricated birth certificates or simply claim that underage Hindu and Christian girls are at least 18 years old. In May, for example, a two-judge bench of the Federal Constitutional Court questioned the authenticity of an official birth certificate for a 15-year-old Christian girl, Sonia Tariq. The judges claimed that parents often underestimate the ages of their children, making their birth certificates “unreliable.” According to her family, Sonia was allegedly abducted and forced to convert to Islam. Her abductors claimed she was 20 years old…
Throughout the first half of 2026, the Pakistani government continued to facilitate a hostile environment for religious minority communities. In several instances, authorities either perpetrated or tolerated attacks against religious minorities, including failing to respond to such attacks and cases of forced conversions.
Pakistan remains a country where life for non-Muslims — especially children — resembles a hell on earth, characterized by rampant abductions, abuse, and forced conversions. Despite these severe human rights violations, Western governments consistently look away while admitting massive numbers of Pakistani and other Muslim migrants, effectively importing a culture that dehumanizes non-Muslims. Given the ongoing trends in mass migration, this disturbing reality foreshadows the future awaiting the West.
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