Pakistan’s Human Rights Reckoning Cannot Be Deferred Any Longer

A new layer of international pressure emerged on December 4, 2025, when 44 US lawmakers urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to impose Global Magnitsky sanctions on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief General Asim Munir.
Led by Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Greg Casar, the bipartisan group accused Islamabad of a “systemic and escalating” campaign of repression—citing disappearances, crackdowns on journalists, and violence targeting women, minorities, and Baloch communities.

Their letter calls for visa bans, asset freezes, and the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, and highlights intimidation reported by U.S.-based critics such as journalist Ahmed Noorani and musician Salman Ahmad.

Pointing to the disputed 2024 elections and the Supreme Court’s approval of civilian trials in military courts, the lawmakers warn that Pakistan is drifting toward authoritarianism behind a “pliant civilian façade.”

They have requested a formal US response by December 17; as of December 9, Pakistan’s Foreign Office has remained silent.

This intensifying scrutiny comes as the world marks International Human Rights Day on December 10—a moment that forces Pakistan to confront an uncomfortable truth: despite being a signatory to seven of the nine core UN human rights treaties, its commitment to those obligations remains largely rhetorical.

The past two years have brought a deepening erosion of civil liberties, a growing militarisation of governance, and a steady normalization of state and non-state violence.

For a country that routinely invokes democratic values on the international stage, Pakistan’s human-rights trajectory tells a far more troubling story—one that regional observers, UN agencies, and international rights organisations can no longer ignore.

A Double Crisis for Pashtuns and Baloch Communities

Few communities illustrate Pakistan’s human-rights crisis more starkly than the Pashtuns and Baloch. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former FATA region, Pashtun civilians continue to bear the brunt of counterinsurgency operations that have spanned more than two decades.

Drone strikes, periodic displacements, and a pattern of enforced disappearances—over 7,600 since 2001 by conservative estimates and up to 20,000 according to the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM)—have created a climate where the rule of law feels increasingly distant.

The state’s decision in October 2024 to designate PTM as a “proscribed organization” under the Anti-Terrorism Act further illustrates how dissent has been reframed as criminality.

Leaders like Ali Wazir and Manzoor Pashteen remain frequent targets of arbitrary arrest, while the abduction of seven PTM delegates after a PTI jirgah in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa underscores the institutionalisation of intimidation.

The situation in Balochistan is even more severe. The pattern known locally as “kill and dump”—the abduction, torture, and extrajudicial killing of Baloch activists—has long been documented by UN Working Groups and groups like Amnesty International.

Women activists, including prominent figures such as Dr. Mahrang Baloch, have increasingly been targeted, reflecting the widening scope of repression. Protests organized by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee have often been met with brutal crackdowns, demonstrating that even peaceful civic mobilisation is considered intolerable by Islamabad.

Enforced disappearances, collective punishment, and economic marginalisation have left the province trapped in a perpetual state of grievance, one that no amount of rhetoric about “development packages” can meaningfully address.

Refugees and Minorities: The Vulnerable Caught in the Crossfire

Nowhere has Pakistan’s policy shift been more drastic—and more internationally criticized—than in its treatment of refugees.

Under the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan, over 844,499 Afghans were forcibly returned between April and June 2025 alone. Government claims that more than 14 million Afghans have been deported cumulatively are impossible to independently verify, but the scale of expulsions is unmistakable.

Women and girls constitute nearly 70 percent of those pushed back, often with little more than hours’ notice, while Amnesty International and other watchdogs have documented widespread extortion, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions, and even deportations of legally registered refugees.

The fact that deportations continued despite court orders reflects a broader trend in Pakistan: judicial oversight is increasingly treated as optional.

The crisis extends to ethnic and religious minorities who face discrimination both codified in law and enforced by mob violence.

Pakistan’s blasphemy statutes—particularly Sections 295B and 295C—continue to be wielded as tools of intimidation, with 344 new cases recorded in 2024, nearly a third involving minorities.

Christians, Hindus, and Shia Muslims—including the beleaguered Hazara community—face their own ordeals, from forced conversions of young girls to sectarian killings claimed by extremist groups.

For Christians in Punjab and Sindh, accusations of blasphemy have often resulted not just in arrests but in mob lynchings and attacks on entire neighbourhoods. Pakistan’s claims of minority protection ring hollow when the perpetrators of such violence are rarely held to account.

A Democracy in Retreat

The erosion of civil liberties has accelerated rapidly since 2022. More than 13,000 members of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have been detained in connection with protests and political mobilisation, with over a thousand still awaiting trial.
The decision to try 85 civilians in military courts following the May 9, 2023 unrest drew sharp condemnation from legal experts and Commonwealth observers, who later raised concerns about systemic rigging in the 2024 election.

Media freedom has suffered dramatically: 162 attacks against journalists were documented in 2024 alone, with reporters such as Khalil Jibran, Malik Hassan Zeb, and Muhammad Siddique Mengal killed by unidentified gunmen.

Abductions of journalists—including the cases of Matiullah Jan and Saqib Bashir, taken while covering a PTI protest—highlight a climate in which the press operates under constant threat.

Digital surveillance systems like the Web Monitoring System (WMS 2.0) and Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS) have further blurred the lines between national security and invasive monitoring of political expression.

This authoritarian drift extends into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), where protests led by the Awami Action Committee in May 2024 and September 2025 were violently suppressed.

Restrictions on local media, censorship of foreign publications, and arbitrary detentions reflect a governance model that prioritises control over accountability. Despite being presented internationally as a champion of Kashmiris’ rights, Islamabad’s actions in PoK reveal a starkly different reality.

The Way Forward Requires More Than Symbolism

Pakistan’s human-rights crisis is not a collection of isolated incidents; it is a structural failure rooted in the overreach of security institutions, the marginalisation of vulnerable groups, and the weakening of democratic oversight.

The international community—from the UN to the EU and the US Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission—has repeatedly urged Islamabad to reverse course. Yet transnational harassment of dissidents abroad, such as cases involving journalist Arshad Sharif, analyst Adil Raja, and campaigners Waqass Goraya and Ahmad Noorani, demonstrates that Pakistan’s rights violations now extend beyond its borders.

For meaningful change, Pakistan must re-establish civilian supremacy, restore judicial independence, and begin a credible process of accountability for enforced disappearances, political repression, and violence against minorities.
Human rights are not an optional policy area to be revisited when convenient; they are the foundation upon which stable, legitimate governance rests.

Until Pakistan confronts this truth, its annual endorsements of International Human Rights Day will remain little more than performative gestures—echoing a promise that its people, from the mountains of Balochistan to the streets of Karachi, have waited far too long to see fulfilled.