Washington, Sep 5: Minority women and girls in Pakistan continue to face severe gender-based persecution, including acid attacks, workplace harassment, blasphemy allegations and honour killings, while many remain vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation in debt-bonded labour, particularly at brick kilns, a report has stated.

International sanctions against Pakistan over reported human rights abuses, including the abduction, forced conversion and forced marriage of women and minority girls, remain legally and politically possible under existing mechanisms, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut wrote in American media outlet ‘PJ Media’.

“Individual countries or unions (like the United States, Canada, the UK, and the European Union) have global human rights sanction frameworks. These laws allow governments to freeze assets and impose travel bans on specific officials, judges, or police commanders complicit in abuses, without punishing the entire civilian population,” Bulut stated.

“International bodies can also restrict trade benefits. For example, the EU monitors human rights compliance under trade arrangements like the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+), which gives developing countries duty-free access to markets. Violations can lead to the suspension of these trade preferences,” she added, highlighting the escalating violence against women across Pakistan.

Bulut noted that hundreds of Christian and Hindu girls and young women abducted by Muslim men continue to await the day they can return to their families.

She cited a report titled ‘Stolen Girls’ presented by the advocacy organisation Jubilee Campaign at the European Parliament on July 14, which documented 210 cases of abduction, forced religious conversion, child marriage and sexual violence against Christian and other minority girls across Pakistan between 2019 and 2025.

Referring to the report, Bulut said that the “cases reflect a broader pattern of abuse facilitated by fraudulent documentation, manipulation of legal processes and institutional failures”

The analyst further said that the findings found that the average age of victims was 12.8 years and the average age of perpetrators stood at 35.8 years. Several of the documented cases, she said, involved an age gap of more than 30 years between the victim and perpetrator.

Last week, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers urged Pakistan to protect an 18-year-old Christian woman, Neha Faqir, who was allegedly abducted, converted to Islam and denied a private meeting with her family.

Representative Chris Smith, Republican co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, said the case of Neha Faqir raised serious concerns about religious freedom and the rights of minority women in Pakistan.

“The circumstances surrounding Neha Faqir’s disappearance and subsequent conversion raise profoundly troubling questions about her safety, freedom of religion, and ability to exercise her rights without coercion or intimidation,” said Smith.

Smith and 10 other members of Congress sent a letter on August 20 to Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Law and Justice, Azam Nazeer Tarar. They urged “the Government of Pakistan to take appropriate action to ensure a just resolution of this matter.”

The lawmakers asked Pakistani authorities to act through the country’s judicial system to “ensure Ms Faqir’s physical safety and well-being; ensure she has confidential access to independent legal counsel and an opportunity to communicate freely and privately with her family; and ensure that any further judicial proceedings are conducted under conditions that allow her to express her wishes freely and without intimidation or undue influence.”

Kathmandu, Sep 5: A Nepali woman and a Chinese national were rescued alive from two separate flood-affected areas on Saturday, 11 days after deadly floods struck areas along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river corridors in Nepal, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said.

A 64-year-old woman, Chandrika Shrestha, was rescued on Saturday from the house of Anand Shrestha in flood-affected Betrawati Bazaar in Nuwakot district.

Shrestha, a resident of Bidur Municipality-10 in Nuwakot, was rescued by a team of the Armed Police Force, Nepal, led by Inspector Suman Bik. She was found unconscious, the PMO said.

Following the rescue, she was taken by helicopter to the Nepali Army’s Maithili Barracks in Trishuli. After receiving initial treatment, she will be taken to Kathmandu for further medical care, if necessary, the PMO said.

Meanwhile, a Chinese national was rescued from a tunnel of the flood-affected 216-MW Upper Trishuli 1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa district, 11 days after the deadly floods struck the area.

The Nepali Army, in coordination with a disaster expert team from South Korea, rescued the Chinese national from Audit 4 of the project’s tunnel, the PMO said in a social media post.

The survivor was subsequently taken to the Maithili Barracks in Trishuli, Nuwakot, for further medical assessment and care.

The rescue was part of intensified ongoing efforts to locate and evacuate people believed to be trapped inside hydropower project tunnels following devastating floods that swept through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river systems last week.

Several hydropower projects and other infrastructure along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river corridors were badly damaged, while several workers employed at hydropower projects in the affected areas remain out of contact.

According to the Independent Power Producers’ Association, Nepal (IPPAN), a representative body of private-sector power developers in Nepal, the under-construction Upper Trishuli 1 Hydropower Project has reported the highest number of people out of contact among 11 flood-affected hydropower projects in the Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts.

As many as 936 people employed at 11 hydropower projects remain out of contact, including 551 from the Upper Trishuli 1 project, IPPAN said on Friday evening.

On Friday, the Nepali Army rescued two Nepali nationals alive after they had been trapped inside the tunnel of the 60-MW Upper Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project in Nuwakot district.

The Nepali Army has been conducting search and rescue operations in coordination with foreign technical teams, including experts from India, China and South Korea, to reach people stranded inside underground structures at several hydropower projects.

Khartoum, Sep 5: At least 26 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate attacks in Sudan’s South Kordofan State, multiple sources have said.

The Sudan Doctors Network, a volunteer group, said in a statement on Friday (local time) that more than 21 people, including women and children, were killed and others injured on Thursday afternoon in an attack by forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), an ally of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), on Debi and Luwairi, south and west of Kauda.

In a separate incident early Friday, five people, including a child, were killed and others injured in artillery shelling by SPLM-N forces that struck the city of Dilling, the network said in a separate statement.

The network condemned the attack on Debi and Luwairi as a violation of a ceasefire agreement reached in late August and accused SPLM-N of targeting civilians, reports Xinhua news agency.

A medical source at a rural hospital in Debi told Xinhua that more than 20 bodies and 11 injured had arrived at the facility, with civilians fleeing the area amid fears of worsening humanitarian conditions.

In Dilling, an eyewitness told Xinhua that artillery hit residential neighbourhoods, killing about five civilians and injuring more than seven.

SPLM-N has not commented on the allegations.

SPLM-N, established in 2011, controls parts of South Kordofan and Blue Nile State.

Sudan’s Kordofan states have witnessed fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on one side and the RSF and SPLM-N on the other, as part of a broader conflict that began in April 2023.

Now in its fourth year, the conflict has killed thousands and displaced millions inside and outside the country.