Country Report: Pakistan

​In 2025 Pakistani authorities suppressed dissenting voices amid a crackdown on media freedom, political opposition, and civil society, often using vague and overbroad laws to stifle criticism. 

Blasphemy-related attacks on religious minorities increased, fueled by discriminatory legislation and government inaction. Militant groups carried out violent attacks on security forces and civilians, killing hundreds. The government used the latter attacks to justify the continued expulsion of Afghan refugees that were in no way connected to the attacks. 
 
Freedom of Expression and Attacks on Civil Society 
Government threats and attacks on the media created a climate of fear among journalists and civil society groups, with many resorting to self-censorship. Journalists faced harassment, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and physical attacks for reporting critical of the government and security forces. 
In January, the National Assembly passed an “anti-disinformation” law criminalizing “false and misleading” online content—which the law does not define—with up to three years in prison. 

In March, masked men abducted prominent journalist Waheed Murad in Islamabad; Murad later appeared in court and was charged under Pakistan’s draconian Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) and held for 48 hours. Also in March, Federal Investigation Agency officers arrested Farhan Mallick, an online media entrepreneur, in Karachi. In August, the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency (NCIA) arrested journalist Khalid Jamil at his Islamabad residence under PECA for “publishing and spreading anti-state narratives on social media” and sharing “false, misleading, and baseless information.” 

Authorities registered some 689 cases under PECA between January and August, targeting many journalists. Television channels critical of the government experienced signal disruptions during broadcasts of opposition rallies. 
 
At least three Pakistani journalists were killed in 2025.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) reported intimidation, harassment, and surveillance by government authorities. The government tightened its regulation of international NGOs, impeding the registration and functioning of international humanitarian and human rights groups. 
 
Freedom of Religion and Belief 
Pakistani authorities enforced blasphemy law provisions that have provided a pretext for violence against religious minorities, leaving them vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Despite dozens of mob and vigilante attacks on people for alleged “blasphemy” in recent years, the government has failed to hold the perpetrators of such attacks accountable. 

In June, Human Rights Watch published a report documenting how blasphemy laws have been exploited for blackmail and profit and have targeted the poor and minorities in unlawful evictions and land grabs. According to the statutory National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), at least 450 people were falsely charged with blasphemy through an organized scheme of blackmail and extortion. In a significant development in July, the Islamabad High Court ordered the federal government to form a commission within 30 days to investigate the growing misuse of blasphemy laws. No commission had been formed as of December. 

Members of the Ahmadiyya religious community were targeted under blasphemy laws and specific anti-Ahmadi legislation. In April, Laeeq Cheema, an Ahmadi man, was beaten to death by a mob in Karachi that had surrounded an Ahmadi place of worship. In May, Dr. Sheikh Mahmood, an Ahmadi doctor, was shot dead in Sargodha district, Punjab. 

Militant groups and the Islamist political party Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) have accused Ahmadis of “posing as Muslims,” a criminal offense in Pakistan. 
 
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Law Enforcement Abuses 
Militant groups including Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), Al-Qaeda, the Balochistan Liberation Army, and their affiliates carried out suicide bombings and other attacks against security personnel that killed hundreds of people. In March, the Balochistan Liberation Army attacked and hijacked a train traveling from Peshawar to Quetta and killed 28 people, including 21 civilian passengers. In May, a suicide attack on a school bus in Khuzdar district, Balochistan, killed eight people, including four children. Pakistan law enforcement agencies were responsible for grave human rights violations, including arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings. The authorities often denied civil society and independent media access to information regarding counterterrorism operations. 

In July, police arrested dozens of protesters in a march to Gwadar, Balochistan, detaining many under preventive public order laws without charge. The authorities cut phone and internet services in parts of Balochistan to disrupt protests throughout the year. 

In May, the Supreme Court ruled that military courts could try civilians involved in violent protests on May 9, 2023; the proceedings were held in secret and suspended many due process protections. The courts announced verdicts for 85 civilians already in custody. 

Despite serious fair trial concerns, in September an Anti-Terrorism Court sentenced 18 people, including several opposition Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) members, among them fashion designer Khadija Shah, to prison sentences of up to 10 years on charges of setting a police vehicle on fire during the protests on May 9, 2023. 
 
Abuses against Refugees 
Government officials blamed Afghan refugees in Pakistan for a surge in militant attacks, providing a pretext for the authorities to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghans, some of whom have lived in Pakistan for generations. Undocumented Afghans were particularly vulnerable to abuse by Pakistani police and local officials. 

The government’s “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” systematically targeted Afghans, beginning with unregistered nationals and expanding to holders of Proof of Registration (PoR) cards issued by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). The campaign accelerated dramatically in July with the authorities targeting PoR cardholders for deportation despite their status as refugees. In 2025, at least 531,700 Afghans were coerced to leave Pakistan for Afghanistan. In August alone, 145,200 Afghans returned, with 54 percent being PoR cardholders who previously had legal protection. Between September and April alone, authorities arrested and detained over 57,300 Afghans, including recognized refugees. 
 
Violence against Women and Girls 
The authorities failed to meaningfully address widespread violence against women and girls, including rape, murder, acid attacks, domestic violence, denial of education, sexual harassment at work, and child and forced marriage. In July, a viral video of an alleged honor killing in Balochistan triggered national outrage, leading to the arrests of over a dozen suspects. The police ultimately filed a criminal case against nearly two dozen people, including a tribal chief who was alleged to have ordered the killing. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an independent human rights monitor, between January and May 2025 at least 268 individuals, including 155 women, were killed in the name of “honor.” 

In a regressive decision in September, the Lahore High Court held that under Islamic law a marriage entered into after reaching puberty is valid, even for children under the legal minimum age of marriage, which is 16 for girls in Punjab. The United Nations has estimated that 18.9 million of the country’s women and girls were married before age 18, including 4.6 million before age 15, with many forced into dangerous early pregnancies. Women from religious minority communities have been particularly at-risk for forced marriage and conversion. 

Two in three women in Pakistan are deprived of their reproductive autonomy and face pressure and abuse in decisions about their reproductive health, according to a 2025 UN report. 

UNICEF reported that over 7 million primary and 14 million secondary school-age children were out of school, mostly girls, due to social pressure, poverty, child labor, and discrimination. 

Pakistan ranked last among 148 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index. Economic Rights and Climate Change 

Catastrophic floods in Pakistan in August killed at least 900 people, displaced four million, destroyed thousands of acres of crops, and severely damaged critical infrastructure. Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis, facing rates of warming considerably above the global average and frequent, extreme climate events. These events are particularly threatening for marginalized and at-risk populations. 

The floods threaten to exacerbate Pakistan’s continuing economic crisis. Debt servicing consumed 48 percent of federal revenues, leaving minimal resources for social services and development expenditures. In May, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed its first review of Pakistan’s funding program, which includes stringent measures that have raised fuel and electricity costs and the price of other necessities without adequate measures to protect rights. 

The impact of both the floods and IMF-mandated measures have strained Pakistan’s limited social protection services, including the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), a cash transfer initiative targeting women living in extreme poverty. 
 
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 
Same-sex sexual conduct between men remains a criminal offense under Pakistan’s criminal code, placing men who have sex with men and transgender women at a high risk of police abuse and other forms of violence and discrimination. 

Transgender women continue to be targeted with violence. At least eight were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2025, and the authorities failed to hold perpetrators accountable in most cases. In September, three transgender women were killed by unidentified assailants in Karachi. A 2018 transgender rights law saw partial implementation, with identity cards issued, but discrimination in health care and employment persisted. 
 
International Actors 
In a January visit, the EU Special Representative for Human Rights warned Pakistan not to take its GSP+ status for granted, as the trade benefits are linked to respect for human rights. In November, an EU monitoring mission was deployed to assess Pakistan compliance with its human rights obligations. 

Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026. New York.

Country Report: Nepal

​In September, Nepal was rocked by violence after police shot and killed 19 protesters, precipitating a day of disorder and arson that toppled the government of Prime Minister K.P. Oli. The protesters, mostly young people rallying in the name of “Gen Z,” had marched towards parliament demanding an end to corruption and the lifting of a sweeping social media ban. Within days, an interim government mandated to conduct fresh elections was sworn in under the leadership of former Chief Justice Sushila Karki. 
 
Progress on justice for human rights violations committed during the 1996-2006 conflict stalled after victim groups rejected commissioners appointed to the transitional justice bodies, saying they were unqualified and lacked political independence. Lack of accountability and security sector reform led to continuing abuses, including custodial torture. 
 
The government failed to expand Nepal’s Child Grant, a proven social security program that currently benefits less than 10 percent of children. 
 
Dalits and other marginalized communities continued to face discrimination. 
 
Deadly Protests 
On September 8, police used excessive and lethal force to suppress youth protests against political corruption and a government ban on 26 social media sites. Seventeen people were shot dead outside the parliament in Kathmandu, and two others were killed in police action in Itahari, Koshi Province. Hundreds were injured. 
 
The following day, crowds of people outraged by the shootings took to the streets of Kathmandu and towns across the country. Prime Minister K.P. Oli resigned. On September 9, arson attacks across the country targeted politicians’ homes, police stations, businesses, schools, media organizations, jails, and government buildings including parliament, the supreme court, and several ministries. At least 76 people were killed in two days of violence. 
 
On September 12, after several days of uncertainty, including over the political role of the army, Sushila Karki was sworn in by the president as interim prime minister, and parliament was dissolved. Her government appointed a judicial commission to investigate the violence and also publicly committed to investigate corruption allegations. New elections were scheduled for March 2026. 
 
Child Rights 
Child marriage remains a serious problem, with 33 percent of girls and 9 percent of boys married before age 18. 
 
Only around 4 percent of the government’s social security budget is allocated to children. The Child Grant, also known as the child nutrition grant, provides monthly payments to families with children under the age of five. At time of writing, grants were available in 25 out of Nepal’s 77 districts, and for all Dalit children under five nationwide, but covered only about 9.5 percent of Nepali children. Eligible families received a monthly payment of NPR 532 (US$3.85) each for up to two children. Studies show that the Child Grant has improved the rights and well-being of children, and enhanced public perceptions of the government among recipients. Around 40 percent of Nepal’s population is under 18. 
 
The Child Grant has been endorsed by numerous Nepali civil society organizations and international policy experts. However, successive governments have not kept commitments to make it universally available. 
 
Accountability and Justice 
Progress on accountability and reparations for human rights violations and abuses committed during the 1996-2006 conflict between Maoist insurgents and security forces was undermined by controversial appointments to Nepal’s two transitional justice commissions. 
 
Impunity prevails for numerous well-documented, grave violations and abuses because successive governments have sought to shield perpetrators. In 2024, parliament adopted a law that victims’ groups broadly accepted as a viable basis to restart the long delayed transitional justice process. However, in May 2025 the appointment of new commissioners to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons was widely opposed by victims who said that the commissioners lacked credentials or political independence. 

Freedom of Expression 
Proposed legislation and government actions under existing laws threatened Nepal’s relatively free and open public discourse. 
 
In September, the K.P. Oli government briefly banned 26 social media sites that had failed to register with the government, contributing to deadly protests that toppled his government the following week. The Electronic Transactions Act, a law purportedly to prevent online fraud, continued to be used to arrest and prosecute journalists and members of the public for legitimate online expression. 
 
Women’s and Girls’ Rights 
Nepal’s citizenship laws continue to discriminate against women by limiting their ability to pass citizenship to their children. Millions of Nepalis are estimated to lack citizenship documents because they cannot prove that their father is Nepali. 
 
Survivors of rape in Nepal have only two to three years to report the crime. UN women’s rights experts have urged Nepal to enact comprehensive laws against all gender-based violence and to repeal this short statute of limitations. 
 
Migrant Workers 
Remittances from Nepalis working in other countries are a mainstay of the Nepali economy. Migrant workers often take out informal loans at exorbitant interest rates to pay recruitment fees and face abuses by foreign employers and domestic recruitment agents including wage theft, contract violations, and sexual violence, with continuing reports of death and chronic illness linked to unsafe working conditions. 
 
Nepal continues to limit issuance of permits for domestic work by Nepalis abroad, which disproportionately affects women. Although the rules are intended to protect Nepali women, economic pressures drive many to use irregular channels to obtain such work, increasing their vulnerability to trafficking, exploitation, and abuse. 
 
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 
Nepal has a record of relatively progressive legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, including landmark Supreme Court rulings recognizing same-sex marriages on an interim basis. However, these rulings are not consistently implemented by officials. For example, in 2025 a lesbian couple attempted to register their marriage but faced harassment, delays, rejection, and were forcibly separated, with police complicity and family hostility exacerbating their ordeal. 
 
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026. New York.

Country Report: Afghanistan
 
In 2025, the Taliban deepened their repression by intensifying restrictions on the rights of women and girls and adding new regulations to curb media freedom. 
 
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis worsened. Large-scale forced returns from Iran and Pakistan coupled with deep cuts to foreign aid left millions without adequate food, shelter, and health care. 
 
Women’s and Girls’ Rights 
Taliban authorities maintained a ban on secondary and higher education for girls and women. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice imposed further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression, by banning women’s voices from being heard in reciting the Quran or singing in public. Women who defied the rules faced abuse and arbitrary detention. 
 
In September, Taliban officials prohibited universities from teaching books written by women. Taliban officials imposed severe restrictions on women and girls’ freedom of movement and access to public spaces. The law stipulates strict rules on dress and behavior, especially for women and girls. Local enforcement committees carried out raids on workplaces to ensure the segregation of women and men, monitored public spaces, and established checkpoints to inspect mobile phones and question vehicle occupants and pedestrians. 
 
Enforcement of the requirement for women to be accompanied by a male relative further restricted women’s liberty and impeded their access to employment and health care, and blocked them from using public transport. Taliban officials detained people for alleged infractions, such as wearing inappropriate hijabs or failing to maintain separate facilities for women and men in work environments. 
 
Taliban officials curtailed women’s right to work. They shut down beauty salons run by women in their homes and a women’s radio station in February. They restricted women’s participation in the delivery of humanitarian aid. 
 
Corporal Punishment, Extrajudicial Killings, Enforced Disappearances, and Torture 
The Taliban carried out public executions of at least four men in Nimruz, Badghis, and Farah provinces. In its first and second quarterly reports, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented 414 cases (327 men, 83 women, three girls, and one boy) of corporal punishment involving public lashings, mostly on accusations of “moral” crimes like adultery. 
 
UNAMA also documented 31 cases of arbitrary arrest and detention and eight allegations of torture and ill-treatment of former government officials and former security force members, and at least six killings of former Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) members. 

​Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 
As was the case under Afghanistan’s former penal code, the Taliban Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law criminalizes same-sex relations. LGBT people in Afghanistan continued to face systematic persecution in 2025, with Taliban officials targeting them for arrest and abuse. Four men convicted of same-sex relations in February were punished with lashing and prison terms ranging from one to five years. 
 
Attacks on the Media, Civil Society, and Minority Communities 
The Taliban continued to curtail freedom of expression and the media, arbitrarily detaining and torturing journalists and other critics. In September, they banned live broadcasts of political shows and limited media interviews to individuals from a pre-approved list. They prohibited reporting on human rights abuses and security incidents, and also increased restrictions on social media and poetry.
 
Local media outlets are required to comply with strict regulations limiting content, including prohibitions on images of people and vague rules against publishing anything against Islam. Activists, academics, writers, and artists are at serious risk of arbitrary detention and ill-treatment. In August, the Taliban leader banned poetry readings encouraging friendships between boys and girls or critical of Taliban decisions. In September, the authorities carried out a 48-hour shutdown of fiber optic internet and all telecommunications across Afghanistan. 
 
In June, Taliban authorities in Faryab province briefly detained a large number of Uzbeks following protests over the authorities’ handling of an earlier altercation between Uzbeks and local Pashtun villagers. On July 27, the Taliban forcibly evicted 25 Hazara families (around 200 people, including women, children, and older persons) from Rashk village in Bamiyan province. Local authorities in Bamiyan banned Shia religious books and a Shia gathering in September. According to the UN, Taliban authorities used physical abuse and death threats to compel some 50 members of the Ismaili community in Badakhshan to convert to the Sunni faith. 
 
Economic and Humanitarian Crises 
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis grew more acute in 2025, as the US enacted massive cuts to foreign aid. By year’s end, more than 22 million people were experiencing food insecurity, with women and girls disproportionately affected. Declining foreign donor funding, the cumulative impact of Taliban restrictions, and large-scale forced returns from Iran and Pakistan left millions of Afghans—including over three million acutely malnourished children—in need of humanitarian aid and assistance. As of September, the UN’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for Afghanistan was less than 20 percent funded. 
 
The loss of foreign assistance has devastated Afghanistan’s healthcare system, exacerbating the health harms of malnutrition. In 2025, more than 400 health facilities closed because of a lack of funds. Cuts to aid have also jeopardized critical online education and scholarship programs for girls and women. 
 
Afghan Refugees 
In 2025 Afghans were one of the world’s largest refugee populations, numbering 5.8 million. In 2025, Iran and Pakistan alone expelled more than two million, including thousands of Afghans born outside the country who had never lived in Afghanistan. As of July, UN experts stated that over 1.5 million Afghans had been deported from Iran. 
 
Among those forced back to Afghanistan have been Afghan activists and journalists who fled to Iran and Pakistan after the Taliban takeover who may be at risk of reprisal because of their work. Former security officers who were deported to Afghanistan have faced arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, and other ill-treatment. 
 
In July, Germany deported 81 Afghans to Kabul, its second such flight since the Taliban takeover, in what the government said would be continuing deportations. In July, the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Afghan nationals claiming that economic and security conditions had improved inside the country, and no threat was posed to returning nationals. The US also deported some Afghan nationals to Panama. 
 
Resettlement schemes for Afghan refugees in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, and other countries stalled, leaving thousands of Afghans who fled the Taliban in limbo in Iran, Pakistan, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries where they were at risk of deportation. 
 
Attacks on Civilians 
Cross-border attacks between Taliban forces and Pakistani security forces in February caused civilian casualties, including at least one death. In March and February, Pakistani airstrikes killed 10 civilians, including five children, in Paktika province. 
 
The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP, the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan) claimed responsibility for several attacks that killed civilians, including a suicide bombing at a bank in Kunduz that killed at least four civilians. 
 
Justice and Accountability 
In October, the UN Human Rights Council adopted by consensus an EU-led resolution establishing a comprehensive independent international accountability mechanism for Afghanistan. The new mechanism has a mandate to investigate and collect, preserve, and analyze evidence of past and ongoing grave violations and abuses in the country, identify those responsible, and support future prosecutions. The move came after years of campaigning by Afghan and international rights groups for the creation of such a mechanism. 
 
The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan presented two reports to the UN Human Rights Council, one on access to justice and protection for women and girls, and one on the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Both reports called for an end impunity and measures to ensure accountability for international crimes committed in Afghanistan. 
 
In July, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the senior Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging them with crimes against humanity for persecution of women and girls and of LGBT people. 
 
In May, Australia established an Afghanistan Inquiry Compensation Scheme to determine compensation due to family members of victims of unlawful killings by Australian special forces in Afghanistan and to victims of unlawful assault or property damage by such forces. In August, an Australian court confirmed a former soldier could stand trial for the war crime of murder. He is accused of killing an Afghan civilian in 2012, the only person charged thus far stemming from investigations conducted pursuant to recommendations issued in 2020 by an independent inquiry, known as the Brereton Report. 
 
In March, the UN Security Council extended UNAMA’s mandate for another year. A UK inquiry into alleged abuses by the country’s special forces during military operations in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013 continued to hear evidence in closed sessions but released little public information. 
 
Advocacy by Afghan women activists increased momentum toward defining gender apartheid as a crime against humanity under international law. 
 
Germany, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands continued to pursue an initiative that could lead to a case before the International Court of Justice on discrimination against women and held a second consultation with Afghan human rights defenders in March 2025. 
 
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026. New York.