Geneva, September 18, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
The Hague-based Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD) has raised concerns before the United Nations Human Rights Council over what it described as serious human rights violations in Balochistan, alleging arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and reprisals against activists, students and families of missing persons.
Addressing the 63rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the organisation called for urgent international attention to the situation in the region and accused Pakistani authorities of targeting Baloch human rights defenders and families of people who have disappeared.
“We draw the Council’s urgent attention to the human rights crisis in occupied Balochistan, where Baloch human rights defenders, students, and families of the disappeared faced enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, and reprisals by Pakistani authorities,” GHRD said.
The organisation also highlighted the continued detention of leaders of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), citing concerns raised by UN Special Procedures regarding the detention of Mahrang Baloch, Beebow Baloch, Gulzadi Baloch and others, as well as alleged reprisals against their families.
GHRD further referred to the life sentences handed down to BYC leaders Mahrang Baloch and Sibghatullah Shahji by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court on June 22, 2026. It alleged that the convictions followed an expedited and secret prison trial in which no direct evidence linking the two to violence was presented.
The rights group also expressed concern over alleged pressure on families to submit declarations distancing themselves from relatives accused of militancy. It said families could face anti-terrorism proceedings and property confiscation for refusing to comply.
“Responsibility must be individuals’. Families cannot be punished for their relatives’ alleged actions,” GHRD said.
The organisation urged the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to press Pakistan to end enforced disappearances and collective punishment, establish the whereabouts of disappeared persons, ensure fair trials and release Baloch human rights defenders detained for peaceful advocacy.
Separately, the BYC last week accused Pakistani authorities of pursuing what it described as a systematic campaign of militarisation and repression in Balochistan. The organisation alleged that violence and displacement had become part of daily life for civilians.
The BYC also referred to the discovery of mutilated bodies of Baloch civilians abandoned along roadsides, describing the alleged incidents as evidence of the “brutality and inhumanity” of the violence.
“What is happening in Balochistan is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a systematic policy of militarisation, destroyed livelihoods, displacement, and violence against civilian life, applied together deliberately,” the BYC said.
The allegations made by GHRD and the BYC were presented as part of their appeals for greater international scrutiny of the human rights situation in Balochistan.
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