Take Action: You Can Help Ensure Equal Rights for Minority Women in Pakistan
The Issue
Hindu, Sikh, B'hai and other non-Muslims living in modern day Pakistan are unable to register and obtain official documentation validating their traditional marriages. For these minorities, and especially women, the inability to obtain official recognition of their status as married leaves them particularly vulnerable to forced marriages with Muslim men and subsequently, forced or coerced conversion to Islam.
What Can You Do?
Click here and sign HAF's petition to Pakistani Ambassador Hussain Haqqani in support of the Pakistani Hindu Marriage Regsistration Bill. Your letter will be sent directly to Ambassador Haqqani. If passed, this bill will be the first step in allowing Pakistani Hindus and other minorities to officially register their marriages.
Background
Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights promises all people, without limitation due to race, nationality or religion, the right to marry and to found a family; the right to enter into a marriage without force and with the free and full consent of the intending spouses; and the right to protection of the family by both society and State.
Yet millions of non-Muslims living in Pakistan today are witnessing the breaking of these promises on a daily basis.
Imagine going through marriage rites and rituals but the government not recognizing your marriage simply because of your religion. Or worse yet, imagine the State deeming you as "single" despite your having gone through your religious tradition's requisite rites and rituals or considering yourself married and then being forcibly converted to Islam and remarried to someone other than your spouse. Unfortunately this is not a hypothetical but a stark reality for too many minority women (and some men) who face this kind of humiliation, exploitation, and discrimination in Pakistan.
Pakistani Hindu Marriage Registration Bill
Advocate Amer Nadeem, an activist for the rights of Hindus, drafted a Pakistani Hindu Marriage Registration Bill 2009, in consultation with Hindu religious scholars, Hindu community leaders and the Hindu Marriage Registration Laws & Rules of India. The draft bill was submitted to the Ministry of Minority Affairs & Ministry of Human Rights to start the legislative process.
Throughout the deliberations, the print media and several television programs were strategic partners in strengthening the campaign by featuring articles about the issue and showcasing interviews of affected minorities. When the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) rejected a Hindu woman’s request for a marriage certificate on grounds that no mechanism or legislation was present to issue such a certificate to a Hindu, widespread media attention shed further light on the issue.