Staff Reports
The European Union keeps giving Pakistan trade perks through the GSP+ program, even as fresh reports show Christians in Pakistan are being kidnapped, forcibly converted, and killed on the job. The EU’s generosity is supposed to come with human rights strings. But those strings are being ignored while the victims — mostly poor Christian women and men — are left to suffer. That deserves a hard look, not another polite press release.
EU GSP+ Keeps the Money Flowing
The Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) lets Pakistan send many products into the EU market duty-free. That’s a massive economic lifeline. Trade rose fast after the deal started. In return, Pakistan promised to respect key treaties on labor rights, good governance, and human rights. Yet the deal’s human rights conditions are not being enforced. The result: tariff breaks for a country that still allows brutal treatment of religious minorities.
Recent Reports Show the Human Cost
Recent cases make the failure painfully clear. Reports say a young Christian girl was abducted, forcibly converted, and married to her abductor. At the same time, several Christian sanitation workers reportedly died after being sent into toxic sewers without safety gear. These are not isolated tragedies. They are signs of a pattern: forced conversions, blasphemy accusations used as mob fuel, systematic exclusion from decent jobs, and deadly workplace conditions for a tiny minority that earns less than a fair shot.
Who Pays the Price
Christians are a tiny share of Pakistan’s population, yet they bear the worst of these abuses. They are disproportionately pushed into the most dangerous and degrading jobs — sanitation, brick kilns, and bonded labor. Blasphemy laws, which carry the threat of death, are often weaponized to seize land, settle grudges, or silence dissent. When courts and police routinely fail victims, trade deals that depend on rule-of-law promises look hollow and hypocritical.
What the EU Must Do Now
If the EU really values human rights, it should stop treating trade as free money and start using leverage. Suspend or rigorously condition GSP+ benefits until Pakistan proves real reforms: enforce protections for religious minorities, reform blasphemy law practice, ensure workplace safety, and prosecute those who abduct and traffic girls. Short of that, the EU will be complicit in exporting cheap goods made on the backs of the persecuted. That would be a scandal — and an avoidable one, if Brussels had the courage to act.
