Up to 2,000 Christian girls are raped, forcibly converted and married off to older Muslim men in Pakistan every year, according to a leading academic.

These crimes have helped earn Pakistan its ignominious designation as a “Country of Particular Concern” on the U.S. Department of State’s Religious Freedom Report. Representing only 2% of the population of Pakistan, Christians are also often victims of the country’s harsh blasphemy laws and mob violence.

NGOs often estimate that 1000 young women and girls are subject to forcible marriage. However, Shaheed Mobeen, a Pakistani professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome and an advocate for religious freedom in Pakistan believes the true figure is far higher.

“The government of Pakistan doesn’t accept [the number of victims as] 1,000 a year, but in the last two years, what I have seen, and what volunteers, nuns and lawyers have found, is that there are about 2,000 forced conversions and marriages a year,” Mobeen told Aleteia.

In addition to Christians, Hindu, Sikh, and Shia Muslim families are being victimized and forced into marriages with Muslim men, he said.