EGN NEWS DESK
UN human rights specialists on Thursday known as on Pakistan to make authorized modifications in mild of continued vulnerability of ladies and women of minority faiths to pressured marriages and spiritual conversions.
The UN particular rapporteurs demanded Pakistan elevate the authorized age for ladies to marry to 18 as a deterrent towards exploitation within the 96-percent Muslim nation.
“The publicity of younger girls and women belonging to non secular minority communities to such heinous human rights violations, and the impunity of such crimes, can not be tolerated or justified,” they mentioned in an announcement issued in Geneva.
They expressed concern that pressured marriages and spiritual conversions of women from minority faiths, together with Christianity, had been “validated by the courts, typically invoking non secular regulation to justify retaining victims with their abductors moderately than permitting them to return them to their mother and father.”
“Perpetrators typically escape accountability, with police dismissing crimes underneath the guise of ‘love marriages,'” they mentioned.
The specialists careworn that baby, early and compelled marriages couldn’t be justified on non secular or cultural grounds. They underscored that, underneath worldwide regulation, consent was irrelevant when the sufferer was a baby underneath the age of 18. At current Sindh is the one province in Pakistan the place the authorized marriage age for each women and boys is eighteen years, whereas in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the minimal for ladies remains to be 16 years.
“A girl’s proper to decide on a partner and freely enter into marriage is central to her life, dignity and equality as a human being and have to be protected and upheld by regulation,” the specialists mentioned.
They careworn the necessity for provisions to invalidate, annul or dissolve marriages contracted underneath duress, with due consideration for the ladies and women involved, and to make sure entry to justice, treatment, safety and ample help for victims.
Notwithstanding the fitting of youngsters to freedom of thought, conscience and faith in accordance with Article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, change of faith or perception in all circumstances have to be free, with out coercion and undue inducements, they mentioned.
“The Pakistani authorities should enact and rigorously implement legal guidelines to make sure that marriages are contracted solely with the free and full consent of the supposed spouses, and that the minimal age for marriage is raised to 18, together with for ladies,” the specialists acknowledged. “Women and women have to be handled with out discrimination, together with these belonging to the Christian and Hindu communities.”
They highlighted instances of pressured non secular conversions, together with that of Mishal Rasheed, who was kidnapped at gunpoint from her dwelling in Punjab Province whereas getting ready for varsity in 2022. Mishal was sexually assaulted, forcibly transformed to Islam and compelled to marry her abductor. They additionally famous that final month, on March 13, a 13-year-old Christian lady was allegedly kidnapped, forcibly transformed to Islam and married to her kidnapper after her age was recorded as 18 on a wedding certificates.
The UN specialists mentioned that Christian and Hindu women remained notably susceptible to pressured non secular conversion, abduction, trafficking, baby, early and compelled marriage, home servitude and sexual violence.
The group included Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief Nazila Ghanea; Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Nicolas Levrat; Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking Siobhan Mullally, and Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery Tomoya Obokata. The chair of the working group on discrimination towards girls and women, Dorothy Estrada Tanck, and members of the working group – Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstic, Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi – additionally joined the specialists.
The particular rapporteurs are a part of the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. Special procedures, the biggest physique of unbiased specialists within the UN Human Rights system, is the final identify of the council’s unbiased fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that deal with both particular nation conditions or thematic points in all components of the world.
The UN specialists urged Pakistan to deliver perpetrators to justice, implement present authorized protections towards baby, early and compelled marriage, abduction and trafficking of minority women, and uphold the nation’s worldwide human rights obligations.
A report printed in November 2021 by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Freedom of Religion and Belief claimed that roughly 1,000 women from different non secular teams in Pakistan had been kidnapped and forcibly transformed.
Tehmina Arora, Asia advocacy director for Alliace Defending Freedom International, mentioned a uniform age for marriage throughout Pakistan coupled with a watchful judiciary will shield the rights and freedoms of younger women throughout the nation, notably these belonging to the susceptible Christian neighborhood.
“Every yr in Pakistan, hundreds of minor women are forcibly transformed by and married to their abductors,” Arora mentioned. “Nobody ought to endure the horrors of abduction, pressured marriage and compelled conversion.”
Pakistan has confronted world opprobrium for its shaky commitments to safeguarding non secular minorities, and the unwillingness of the Pakistani authorities to denounce extremism with out equivocation. But that has not slowed the momentum of oppression focusing on Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadis, who’re among the many most marginalized and persecuted teams within the nation.
Despite makes an attempt to take action, particularly in provincial assemblies, liberal Pakistani legislators have been unable to go laws towards pressured conversions and additional amending Pakistan’s baby marriage legal guidelines. These two points have a deep correlation and additional complicate makes an attempt to enact any such legal guidelines.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of probably the most troublesome locations to be a Christian, because it was the earlier yr.
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