New report paints worrying picture for religious minorities in Pakistan
Christians and members of other minorities continue to suffer from systemic discrimination. Blasphemy laws and violence against women and girls are a particular concern.
The abuse of Pakistan’s laws against blasphemy and the abduction and forced conversion of girls continue to plague members of minority religions, including Christians in the Asian country. That’s according to the the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), a branch of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
In a new report, shared with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the NCJP highlights a large number of violations of the human rights of religious minorities — both Christian and non-Christian — in Pakistan during the year 2025.
The report includes details of murders of Christians in 2025, including Kashif Masih, who was accused of theft and tortured to death, and also Afzal Masih, who was shot dead while on his way to the Christian shrine of Mariamabad.
Most cases involve social discrimination. For example, attempts to obtain clarity and justice in the case of the 2023 Jaranwala attacks have been thwarted, while experts have criticized a “majoritarian and supremacist mindset” in educational material.
Blasphemy charges remain a major concern. In 2025, eight Christians were formally charged with blasphemy, while two Christians were released on bail following previous charges. Members of other religions, both minorities and mainstream Muslims, also suffer from the misuse of blasphemy laws. ACN has followed this issue closely for many years.
The punishment for blasphemy in Pakistan ranges from execution to life imprisonment. The bar for presenting charges is low, which makes it a useful tool for people seeking to persecute members of religious minorities, or settle personal scores.
The positive news is that eight Christians were acquitted of blasphemy charges in 2025, while Federal Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said that the government is working to introduce procedural safeguards to prevent the misuse of blasphemy laws and ensure timely justice.
Violence against women still high
Another worrying category is violence and crimes against women, including young girls, an issue which has been covered by ACN at length over the years.
The report details several cases of abduction of young girls from minority religions, leading to forced conversion and marriage. In some of these cases, the authorities proved to be complicit in the crimes, siding with the abductors and refusing to register complaints by parents of underage girls.
However, the report also mentions cases where judges refused to hand minors over to their alleged husbands, returning them to their families. Plus, some aggressors were convicted in courts.
Nonetheless, the report includes references to 35 separate incidents involving dozens of women and girls from minority groups in Pakistan in 2025, mostly Christians and Hindus.
Good signs
The report does include some signs of positive evolution. For example, the minister for Minorities Affairs in Punjab highlighted the role of the Christian community in Pakistan as “exemplary” and said that providing protection and security to the Christian community remained one of the Punjab government’s foremost priorities.
Another positive development concerns blasphemy cases. In 2025, eight Christians were acquitted of blasphemy charges, while Federal Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar stated that the government is working to introduce procedural safeguards to prevent the misuse of blasphemy laws and ensure timely justice.
Also, in 2025, the country’s high court explicitly forbade the use of the expression “Christians only” in advertisements for sanitation jobs, ending a practice that had existed for many years.
In an introduction to the new NJPC report, Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, the panel’s chairman, writes that “Pakistan is a nation richly blessed with diverse cultures and a deep religious heritage. Yet there is a troubling contradiction at its heart. Time and again, state officials, politicians, and Muslim religious leaders declare, in public and without hesitation, that Pakistan is a country of Muslims, for Muslims.”
“In doing so, they render the remaining three percent of the population invisible,” he adds.
“This is not merely a rhetorical failure. It is a deliberate denial of Pakistan’s multi-religious reality, and the nation has paid an enormous price for it,” Bishop Shukardin concludes.
ACN ranks Pakistan as a country of persecution, the highest level, in its most recent edition of the Religious Freedom in the World Report, published in 2025.
– Filipe d’Avillez
