Pakistan is right to say that any serious discussion of Balochistan must begin with balance rather than political theatre. Ms. Ana Lorena Delgadillo Pérez is a member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, and like all Special Procedures mandate holders, she serves in an independent capacity rather than as a spokesperson for the United Nations as an institution. That distinction matters. When independent experts speak on an issue as fraught as Balochistan, they carry moral weight, and with that comes a duty to avoid selective framing. There is no doubt that allegations of disappearances and abusive detention deserve scrutiny. But there is also no excuse for discussing Balochistan as though terrorism were a footnote and the state alone were the active force in the conflict.
The first omission in such narratives is the scale and reality of militant violence. In February 2026, the UN Security Council condemned terrorist attacks across multiple locations in Balochistan, noted that the Balochistan Liberation Army had claimed responsibility, and urged all states to cooperate with Pakistan in bringing the perpetrators, organisers, financiers, and sponsors to justice. That is not Pakistani rhetoric; it is the language of the Security Council. Likewise, the United States formally designated the Balochistan Liberation Army, including the Majeed Brigade and other aliases, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2025, while the United Kingdom has long proscribed the BLA and, in 2025, formally recognized the Majeed Brigade as an alternative name for that already banned group. Any account of Balochistan that soft-pedals these facts is not courageous; it is incomplete.
There is also a basic legal point that should not be blurred. The UN Charter rests on the sovereign equality of states and on respect for territorial integrity in international relations. Balochistan is internationally recognized as part of Pakistan, and no UN body has treated it otherwise. That does not give Pakistan a free pass on rights concerns, but it does mean that counterinsurgency and law-enforcement measures in the province must be analyzed within the framework of state sovereignty, domestic jurisdiction, and international legal obligations, not through the romantic lens of separatist activism. A rights-based critique is legitimate.
A critique that quietly dissolves the distinction between human-rights oversight and political endorsement of separatist narratives is not
The “missing persons” issue, of course, cannot simply be waved away, and Pakistan should not attempt to do so. Families deserve answers, and every credible allegation must be investigated. But it is also wrong to assume that every claimed disappearance automatically proves a centrally directed policy of abduction and abuse. Pakistan’s own Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances continues to publish monthly reports. Its August 2025 report listed 10,618 total cases received since inception and 8,873 disposed of, leaving 1,745 pending. The same report broke down the 103 cases disposed of that month into categories including traced persons, returnees, confinement in internment centres, one dead body, and a large number of cases determined not to be enforced disappearances or lacking complete particulars. That does not settle the controversy, but it does show that there is an official process and that the picture is more complex than the sloganized version often presented abroad.
What deserves more attention is that the state appears to be trying, however imperfectly, to move from opacity toward formalized legal mechanisms. Official Balochistan legislative materials in 2025 referred to detention, rehabilitation, and de-radicalization centres and to recordkeeping duties for detention-centre authorities. In February 2026, Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti said the province had established de-radicalization centres where suspects would remain under legal oversight, with family access, medical facilities, and judicial review of any extension in detention. Critics are entitled to question whether these safeguards will work in practice. They are not entitled to pretend such measures do not exist at all.
A fair assessment should test these mechanisms rigorously, not erase them because they complicate a preferred narrative
Pakistan is also justified in objecting when international platforms become echo chambers for one side of a deeply violent conflict. The OHCHR itself has documented that UN experts have raised concerns about arrests, protests, and alleged disappearances involving Baloch activists and the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. Those concerns should be heard. But the state is equally entitled to insist that discussion of Balochistan include the victims of bombings, shootings, and attacks on civilians, security personnel, and infrastructure. Human-rights language loses credibility when it appears incapable of holding two truths at once: that the state must be accountable under law, and that terrorist violence is real, organized, and politically consequential.
The proper international response, then, is neither to swallow state talking points whole nor to canonize every anti-state platform as a pure voice of conscience. It is to demand verified facts, legal accountability, and intellectual honesty. Pakistan should continue to engage with UN mechanisms, provide access to bona fide cases, strengthen judicial oversight, and punish abuses where proven. But the UN system and its experts should be equally careful not to let advocacy spaces flatten Balochistan into a morality play in which terrorism disappears from the script. Peace in Balochistan will not come from propaganda, selective outrage, or separatist mythmaking. It will come from law, transparency, development, and an unsentimental commitment to protecting civilians from both militant brutality and unlawful state excess.
