Nicolas Levrat, U.N. special rapporteur on minority issues, addresses a side-event of U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Oct. 1, 2026. (Jubilee Campaign)

LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – Three United Nations special rapporteurs last week urged Pakistan to protect girls from abduction, forced religious conversion and child marriage, warning that existing laws will have little effect unless authorities ensure access to justice and enforce them consistently.

The experts spoke during a side-event of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday (Oct. 1), jointly organized by advocacy groups Jubilee Campaign and the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ), that highlighted the cases of Christian girls allegedly abducted and forcibly converted to Islam and married to Muslim men.

The event featured testimony from families, including the mother of 13-year-old Christian girl Maria Shahbaz, who disappeared from her home in July 2025 and later told a court that she had converted and married her 30-year-old alleged abductor, Shehryar Ahmad, of her free will.

“We don’t know where they are keeping her,” Maria’s mother said in a video played during the event. “We have terrible thoughts about what is happening to her.”

The event brought together Professor Nicolas Levrat, U.N. special rapporteur on minority issues; Reem Alsalem, special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences; and Dr. Katarina Schwarz, the newly-appointed special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in persons.

Levrat said Pakistan’s international obligations, including those under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, require protection of children from forced religious conversion and child marriage.

“The impunity surrounding forced religious conversions will not be solved by new laws or legislation,” Levrat said, according to a press statement issued by Jubilee Campaign USA.

Instead, he called for better access to justice for religious minorities, along with training and technical cooperation for police, prosecutors and judicial authorities.

His comments followed testimony about families who had repeatedly approached courts and authorities without securing the return of abducted girls.

Shahbaz Masih, father of Maria Shahbaz, described how his family had gone “from court to court” seeking help, but “nothing happened.”

Levrat said authorities needed to seriously consider complaints from minority families and address what he described as widespread institutional and societal bias in favor of the dominant religious group.

“This has to be worked on,” he said.

Schwarz, speaking online, said child marriage can fall within the category of slavery and stressed that slavery and other forms of exploitation frequently occur in environments marked by discrimination, particularly against women and girls. She said the responsibility to protect children rests with the state and urged Pakistan to take preventive measures and provide “robust and effective protection” to fulfill its obligations.

Alsalem highlighted recent legal reforms in Pakistan, including Punjab’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2026, which raised the minimum marriage age to 18 for both boys and girls and made underage marriage a non-bailable offense. The law also provides that cohabitation with a child resulting from such a marriage constitutes child abuse, regardless of the child’s consent.

The reform is particularly significant in Punjab, where rights advocates say many cases involving the abduction, forced conversion and marriage of Christian girls have been reported.

But Alsalem expressed concern about inconsistent enforcement of such laws, saying accountability can depend on the court hearing a case and the involvement of lawyers. She also pointed to pressure placed on victims and their families to withdraw complaints, sometimes involving alleged perpetrators and, in some cases, law-enforcement officials.

Christophe Foltzenlogel, advocacy officer with the ECLJ, said Pakistan already has legal provisions capable of protecting victims but that enforcement remains a major problem. He cited the case of Shahzad Masih, who was 16 when he was arrested in 2017 on a blasphemy accusation.

Foltzenlogel said a senior police officer testified that Shahzad’s words were not insulting, but pressure from religious hardliners affected the proceedings. The teenager was ultimately sentenced to death in November 2022 after the court declined to try him as a minor.

Shahzad has since told his lawyers, “They should just hang me. I cannot bear this suffering of waiting every single day.”

Foltzenlogel also drew a comparison between the way authorities respond to stolen property and the way they handle the abduction of girls. In Maria’s case, he said, a then-12-year-old girl allegedly abducted by a 30-year-old man remains under the control of the man despite repeated domestic and international appeals.

“Why is there more care given to an intangible object that has been stolen than to the abduction of a human life?” he asked.

Joseph Janssen, advocacy officer with Jubilee Campaign, said he had personally observed the treatment of minor girls in forced conversion cases. He cited the case of Amber Nadeem, saying lawyers argued in court that because she had converted to Islam, she could not be returned to her Christian parents because doing so would amount to apostasy.

“Her status as a child was being pushed aside,” Janssen said.

He said such arguments demonstrated the societal pressure surrounding cases involving Christian girls and reinforced the need for authorities to treat the protection of children as a priority regardless of their claimed religious status.

Maria Shahbaz’s case has been raised repeatedly before Pakistani courts and in international forums, including the European Parliament and the United Nations. Yet she remains with the man accused of abducting her, Janssen said.

“Why has she still not been placed in government protective custody, away from those accused of harming her?” he asked.

The panel also highlighted previous communications from U.N. special procedures concerning forced religious conversion through marriage in Pakistan. Levrat said there had been no response to a U.N. communication raising concerns about forced conversion and abductions of women and girls.

In an April statement, U.N. experts said the scale and persistence of such violations pointed to “systemic discrimination against non-Muslim women and girls” who are forced or compelled to convert to Islam to marry Muslim men. The experts called on Pakistan to intensify efforts to eradicate forced conversions, raise the minimum marriage age to 18 across the country, criminalize forced religious conversion as a distinct offense, and enforce laws concerning human trafficking and sexual violence.

The Geneva side-event sought to reinforce those calls, emphasizing that legislation alone cannot protect vulnerable girls unless police, prosecutors and courts implement the law.

For the families of abducted girls, Janssen said, the immediate priority remains their safe recovery.

“Pakistan needs to rescue the girls from their abductors while they wait for justice,” he said.

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