Pakistani authorities often dismiss claims of mistreatment of minorities as foreign propaganda. An official Pakistani body now confirms them.
by A. Sahara Alexander
For years, international NGOs and minority rights advocates have sounded the alarm over the treatment of religious minorities in Pakistan, only to be dismissed by some as agents of “anti-Pakistani propaganda.” But now, the truth comes from within. A new report released by Pakistan’s own National Commission on the Rights of the Child (NCRC) lays bare a grim reality: children from minority religions face entrenched, multi-layered discrimination, and the state knows it.
The report, “Situation Analysis of Children from Minority Religions in Pakistan,” funded by UNICEF and published in August 2025, is not the work of foreign critics. It is a government document, and its findings are damning.
From forced conversions and child marriages to bonded labor and exclusion from education, the report documents abuses that are not isolated incidents but systemic patterns. Between 2021 and 2024, at least 1,000 cases of forced conversions per year were reported, most involving Hindu and Christian girls. “However, this figure is believed to be conservative, with actual numbers potentially much higher,” states the report.
The report also highlights how school curricula reinforce religious bias, how peers and teachers ostracize minority children, and how poverty and caste intersect to deepen their vulnerability. These are not the inventions of foreign NGOs. They are the lived realities of Pakistan’s citizens, acknowledged by its institutions.
And yet, the report stops short of naming the deeper structural forces at play. It mentions caste and gender but fails to unpack how these shape daily discrimination. It calls for reforms but offers few mechanisms for enforcement. Still, its very existence is a watershed moment.
When a government commission confirms what civil society has long decried, dismissing these concerns as foreign meddling becomes impossible. The discrimination of religious minority children in Pakistan is not a narrative—it is a tragic fact. And now, the state has said so.
Uses a pseudonym for security reasons.
