There is a sad and barbaric tradition that still continues to this day. It’s called Forcible Marriage. It’s essentially a form of human trafficking, masquerading as a tradition. Women have few rights in traditional Islam, and are viewed more as property than a human being. It’s why when 15 year old Muskan Salman was kidnapped and forcibly married, the police have done nothing to get her back, despite the desperate pleas of her father.

I can only imagine the heartbreak at the thought of the things she is having to endure under this man’s captivity. He had already taken her out of school because the eventual kidnapper, a 27 year old man named Arsalan Ali, was already harassing her. He then resorted to abducting her, and forging a marriage certificate, claiming the girl was 19 years old. Now there’s a legal battle to prove her age. In none of the reports has anyone bothered to even ask Muskan what the hell happened. She is essentially in the custody of the husband, and that’s considered fine in the eyes of many.

Part of the reason people have turned a blind eye to all of this is because it’s part of a pattern of behavior in the country. You see, Muskan is part of a Christian minority, and these kinds of incidents are so frequent that the U.N. has called on Pakistan to make more changes to their laws to prevent this form of human trafficking.

“The exposure of young women and girls belonging to religious minority communities to such heinous human rights violations, and the impunity of such crimes, can no longer be tolerated or justified,” they said in a statement issued in Geneva.

Now, because this is the U.N. and their calls are left to voicemail, and it’s doubtful anything will come of this. Muskan will be forgotten about, like so many other young girls forced to live with their rapists and bare their children. So long as this tradition and the underlying faith that sustains it continues to rule, these types of tragedies will continue to occur with terrifying frequency.