Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to target their Official Development Assistance to Pakistan on methods and programmes that provide effective measures to prevent abductions, forced conversions and forced marriages of girls from minorities in Pakistan.

Our Aawaz II Accountability, Inclusion and Reducing Modern Slavery Programme will spend £39.5 million over 5 years (2018 - 2024) across the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. This will continue to be our main ODA-funded programmatic tool for addressing issues affecting marginalised and vulnerable groups in Pakistan until 2024.

The UK Government strongly condemns child, early and forced marriage and forced conversion of all women and girls in Pakistan, including from religious minorities. We regularly raise at a senior level our concerns about Freedom of Religion or Belief, women and girls' rights and gender equality with the Government of Pakistan. Most recently, I raised our concerns about child, early and forced marriage and forced conversion of women and girls in Pakistan, including from religious minorities, with Pakistan's Human Rights Minister, Dr Shireen Mazari, on 19 October.