PAKISTAN: About the misuse of EU taxpayers’ money to finance controversial school education programs
HRWF presentation at a side-event co-organized by CAP/ Liberté de conscience, Human Rights Without Frontiers and Global Human Rights Defence on 26 March 2025
By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (27.03.2025) – Pakistan’s Constitution guarantees freedom of religion for all Pakistani citizens. Yet, as Mr Jan Figel, former EU Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief has just told us, reality tells a different story.
Since 2014, the European Union has tried to help Pakistan improve its human rights record with trade incentives. A win-win proposal: the privileged access to the EU market in exchange of the ratification and implementation of 27 international conventions to improve human rights and the rule of law. This mechanism is known as the GSP+, the Generalised Scheme of Preferences.
In this framework, Pakistan’s products enter the EU market with 0% duties across approximately 2/3 of all EU tariff lines.
From 2014 to 2022, Pakistan’s exports to the EU almost doubled, from 8.3 billion EUR to almost 15 billion EUR.
For 10 years, Pakistan has been the winner in this operation and the EU has been the loser. Indeed, over the years, many parliamentary questions and resolutions have highlighted Pakistan’s disregard for human rights and the lack of political will to prioritize its human rights record.
By accepting de facto this situation and by failing to sanction Pakistan’s non-implementation of the GSP+, the EU has misused the money of the EU taxpayers and has lost its credibility as a commercial power guided by human values. Indeed, the list of persistent egregious human rights violations has remained unchanged for 10 years:
- the fabrication of blasphemy cases against Christians, Ahmadis and other religious minorities
- the sentencing to heavy prison terms and even the death penalty on such blasphemy charges
- the impunity of false accusations, acts of violence and mob violence against members of minority religious communities, places of worship and communal buildings
- the controversial funding of schools in an environment of religious extremism
- the persistence of madrassah religious schools, beacons of indoctrination and extremism, which are out of control of the state, etc.
The 2021 Single National Curriculum
The 2021 Single National Curriculum (SNC) in force in state schools has institutionalised religious bias, embedding Islamic teachings across core subjects and forcing non-Muslim students into an environment of indoctrination and exclusion.
The Curriculum in force in state schools drew strong criticisms from education experts and human rights defenders for its lack of inclusivity, the over-emphasis on Islamic religious content at the expense of religious minorities, the subliminal ideology of Islamic supremacy and poor pedagogy.
Alarmingly, in the province of Punjab, which has a bit more than 50% of the total Pakistani population, extremist religious clerics now hold power over curricula of state schools, censoring content and restricting academic freedom.
The persecution of open-minded teaching staff
In October 2023, Islamic clerics forced a college professor to publicly renounce teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as against Islamic law. A video showing his academic recanting was posted on social media and got viral.
In May 2022, the car of that professor had already been attacked with a magnetic bomb, leaving him in a wheelchair for several months.
Such serious incidents orchestrated by extremist clerics and spread around in social media clearly pursue the objective to terrorize any teacher who would decide to support Darwin’s theory of evolution rather than the Islamic theory of creationism. This is Inquisition.
The EU funding of Pakistan’s questionable school education system
According to the 2024 Report “Pakistan, Education System, Curriculum and EU Funding” supported by several Members of the European Parliament, the money of European taxpayers of the 27 EU Member States has been misused to finance such questionable school education programs in Pakistan. The amount is enormous: between 100 and 150 million EUR from 2016 to 2024
The question is “Should European taxpayers finance a public education system the implementation of which largely remains in the hands of extremist Muslim clerics who terrorize broad-minded teachers and professors? Would European taxpayers and political leaders accept that their State finances Muslim faith-based schools at home where Creationism would be taught?”
I think the answer is obvious and the conclusion of the European Union should be “Let us stop financing Pakistan’s school education system as long as…” but there is no such answer.
Maybe the various UN institutions financing school education in Pakistan should also strengthen their oversight to ensure that their financial assistance does not contribute directly or indirectly to religious indoctrination and Islamization.
In Brussels, the co-chair of the Intergroup on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Dutch member of the European Parliament Bert-Jan Ruissen recently submitted a written question to the European Commission on this matter wondering if the EU funding “is not being used in Islamic madrassas.” In his answer the EU Commissioner failed to reply to this concern as well as the two following questions of MEP Ruissen that are worth quoting:
What mechanisms does the Commission have in place to determine which curricula have Islamic religious content that seeps into general subjects in state schools to which non-Muslim children may be exposed? NO ANSWER. And what restrictive measures or sanctions does the EU have at its disposal for such cases? NO ANSWER.
Does the Commission intend to make public any breaches of the provisions of the agreement signed with Pakistan, with a view to safeguarding the faith of non-Muslim children from any form of indoctrination in schools? If so, in what context and when will this be done. NO ANSWER.
See HERE the common full written statement of CAP/ Liberté de conscience and Human Rights Without Frontiers (25.02. 2025) submitted to the 58th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
UN Geneva- Credit Willy Fautré, HRWF