A Lahore High Court ruling on August 31 said living in a marital relationship with a girl under 18 can constitute child abuse even if the minor consents.
The judgment was made in the case of a Pakistani Muslim minor, Hina Aslam. The judge ruled that a marriage involving a person younger than 18 falls within the definition of child marriage under the recently enacted Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Act 2026. The court said the new law had changed the legal position on child marriage and must be applied accordingly.
Non-Muslim women and girls in Pakistan, however, continue to face severe persecution, including forced marriages. Christian and Hindu girls are abducted, raped, forced to convert and “marry” their abductor. Victims are as young as seven and include girls with disabilities. Families often never see them again while the police rarely act and the courts frequently fail victims.
On July 14, a study titled “Stolen Girls” was unveiled by the human rights organizations Voice for Justice and Jubilee Campaign at the European Parliament. It documented 210 verified cases of abduction, forced religious conversion, child marriage and sexual violence involving Christian and other minority girls between 2019 and 2025.
At the event, together with Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), Bert-Jan Ruissen (ECR) and Matej Tonin (EPP), the Jubilee Campaign brought attention to the plight of minority girls in Pakistan. MEPs, legal experts, human rights advocates, and affected families gathered in Brussels to call for stronger protection, accountability, and justice for vulnerable minority girls.
Of the 210 documented cases, more than 83% of the victims were younger than 18. The report identified 134 victims between the ages of 14 and 17 (63.8%), 41 younger than 14 (19.5%), and 35 adults over 18 (16.7%).
The study found that the average victim was 12.8 years old, while the average perpetrator was 35.8 years old, creating an average age gap of 23 years. In several documented cases, the age difference exceeded 30 years.
According to the report:
Many girls between the ages of 10 and 16 are abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and then forcibly married to their abductors, who are often presented as bachelors in court records despite being much older and, in some cases, already married and with children. These cases reveal not only the vulnerability of child victims, but also how legal and documentary processes may be manipulated to obscure the true circumstances of abduction and coercion.
Child brides from minority communities face an increased risk of violence, exploitation, and abuse, all of which threaten their rights to education, health, work, bodily autonomy, and religious freedom. The abduction of schoolgirls also interrupts their education and limits access to skills, livelihoods, and opportunities for self-reliance, thereby deepening their long-term social and economic marginalization.
Early pregnancy further intensifies these harms, placing girls at serious risk of physical and psychological complications and making reunification with their families even more difficult. In many cases, abducted girls from minority communities are not accepted by their in-laws as daughters-in-law; instead, they are treated as domestic servants and subjected to continued control and exploitation. As a result, survivors frequently experience trauma, including flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, emotional detachment, and difficulty concentrating on study or work, while also facing rejection from both family and community.
The report noted that such abuses were not isolated criminal acts, but rather part of a widespread pattern enabled by fraudulent documentation, legal manipulation, and institutional failures that allow perpetrators to evade accountability.
One case documented in the report is that of Amber Nadeem, a 13-year-old Christian girl from Faisalabad who was abducted on June 12, 2026, by a Muslim man named Mohsin Liaquat. After her recovery, Amber told a Judicial Magistrate that the accused’s family had pressured and coached her to claim that she was an adult, had willingly converted to Islam, and had freely married him.
Although the Magistrate ordered an age assessment and placed Amber in a shelter, the Faisalabad court later granted her custody to the accused and granted him bail.
In an interview with PJ Media, Joseph Janssen, the chairman of the Voice for Justice, said that Amber’s statement before the Judicial Magistrate is particularly significant because it raises questions as to whether her Islamic conversion and marriage were done freely and voluntarily.
Amber's parents were married in 2012, and her family states that Amber was born in 2013 as their first child, while the conversion certificate and Nikah Nama (Islamic marriage contract) presented to the court recorded her date of birth as June 2008.
“When there is such a fundamental dispute over the age of a child, the first responsibility of the authorities is to establish the child’s true age and ensure her protection,” Janssen said. “The child should not be returned to the custody of the person accused of abducting her while these questions remain unresolved.”
According to Janssen, the Amber Nadeem case demonstrates Pakistan's wider failure to adequately protect minority girls who face abduction, forced conversion and child marriage. He stressed that Pakistan’s child-protection and child-marriage laws must be implemented in practice, not merely exist on paper.
“The priority should be the safety and best interests of the child,” Janssen said. “Where there are allegations of abduction, coercion and falsification of age documents, the authorities must conduct a thorough and independent investigation and hold those responsible accountable.”
In another recent case, Aneeqa Ishaq, a 16-year-old Christian girl in Lahore, was abducted by a Muslim man who then forced her to convert to Islam and coerced their marriage. After her recovery from captivity in July of this year, she filed a petition in a Lahore family court seeking to have the marriage declared void. Aneeqa's family has since moved away from their rented home and even changed their phone numbers, fearful of being traced.
Janssen affirmed that Christian and Hindu girls in Pakistan continue to be abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and married to their abductors, in some cases, with police and the judiciary failing to protect victims and facilitating the process.
Pakistan has enacted laws to prevent child marriage and protect children, but Janssen said that when it comes to religious minorities, these laws too often remain only on paper.
“In my opinion, there is virtually zero implementation of these laws when the victims are Christian or Hindu girls,” he said. “A law means nothing if police do not enforce it, courts accept questionable age documents, and abductors are allowed to retain custody of children.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan remains a major beneficiary of the trading opportunities offered by the EU Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP). Since January 1, 2014, Pakistan has benefited from generous tariff preferences under the so-called GSP+ arrangement, which aims to support sustainable development and good governance. In order to maintain GSP+, Pakistan has to keep ratifying and effectively implementing 27 core international conventions on human and labor rights, environmental protection, and good governance.
Janssen urged the EU to take GSP+ conditionality seriously and not treat Pakistan’s trade preferences as a blank cheque. "Pakistan is a party to core international human rights conventions and must demonstrate that these commitments are implemented in practice," he said.
Pakistan ranks eighth among the 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution in Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List, which cited systemic discrimination, mob violence, forced conversions, bonded labor and gender-based abuses.
Janssen called on the European Union and the United States government to adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards the abduction, forced religious conversion and child marriage of minority girls in Pakistan. He said these abuses cannot be dismissed as isolated criminal cases or merely domestic matters when they reflect systematic failures to protect children and religious minorities. “There must be clear consequences when minority girls are abducted, forcibly converted and married against their will,” Janssen said. “The EU and US must make the protection of these children a clear condition of their engagement with Pakistan and demand measurable action, accountability and effective enforcement from Pakistani authorities.”
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