During the period under review, South Asia’s various minority groups continued to face violent targeting and discrimination from non-state actors and, in some cases, from state actors. Across all countries in the region, these acts have been followed by state failures to hold perpetrators to account and uphold the rule of law.

In Afghanistan, peace negotiations with the Taliban have raised fears among civil society actors, and among minorities, of the gains of the past two decades being put to risk. Simultaneously, its Hindu and Sikh minorities continued their exodus out of the country. In Bangladesh, even as a landmark court verdict paved the way for minority women to enjoy full inheritance rights, violent targeting of the Hindu and indigenous peoples communities continued. In India, repression of dissent against authorities escalated further, in the form of a number of high-profile arrests, and restrictive legislative measures. And as the country’s various minority groups continued to face violent attacks, a court verdict in a decades-old dispute gave Hindu supremacists an almost-indomitable victory over secular forces. In Indian-administered Kashmir, the body count of extreme militarisation continued to rise. Nepal witnessed continued attacks on Dalits and, as in the rest of the region, a sharp rise in violence against women. Pakistan saw a major spike in anti-Shia sentiment and persecution, and a horrific incident of rape galvanised women across the country to hit the streets in protest. Abduction, forced conversion and marriage of minority girls continued. And in Sri Lanka, further consolidation of power by the majoritarian ruling coalition after a landslide victory in parliamentary elections raised fears among the country’s Tamil and Muslim communities.

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