Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if he will include the category of religious minorities to the data that his Department collects on vulnerable populations in Pakistan.

DFID Pakistan is making efforts to include the category of religious minorities into the data that it collects on vulnerable populations by improving government data collection and protecting the rights of minorities. We currently collect data on minority status when there is a specific need for it, such as for our programmes which specifically aim at helping minority groups. We recently had some success in collecting more and better-quality data on people with disabilities in Pakistan. We learned from that and will build on it to focus our energy on collecting data from other vulnerable and minority groups.