Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has just launched a fresh report looking at the kidnapping, forced conversion and sexual victimisation of Christian women and girls.

The front cover of the ACN report

The charity’s Hear Her Cries report will be the first of its kind to focus on the phenomenon of young women who are seized, because both their sex and religion makes them vulnerable to abduction and assault. It provides country focuses on Egypt, Iraq, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria, also providing case studies from these nations.

According to research carried out by ACN, looking at the situation for religious groups in 196 countries, the number of incidents involving girls and women being taken from their families, raped and forced to change their faith has grown over the last few years.

Research for the report suggested that in the countries under examination, not only are women from minority faith groups particularly susceptible to attack, but often Christian women are targeted most by militants.

According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, Christians make up 95 per cent of women and girls being held by Islamist extremists.

In Pakistan, the Movement for Solidarity and Peace suggested that Christians could comprise up 70 per cent of minority faith girls and young women forcibly converted and married every year. Hindu girls are also a major target of kidnappings in parts of Pakistan.

The speakers at the new report launched in London included Michele Clark, who has done research into the kidnapping of Coptic Christian women in Egypt, and John Pontifex, ACN’s head of press of the UK national office, who co-wrote the report.

It also included exclusive video testimony from a kidnapped woman.

Another speaker was Fiona Bruce MP, the PM’s Special Envoy for the UK’s Freedom of Religion and Belief Forum (FoRB). FoRB brings together civil society groups, faith or belief organisations and human rights NGOs to advance the cause of freedom of religion or belief around the world.