Shia account for approximately 10–15 per cent of the Muslim population in Pakistan, which has a largely Sunni Muslim population. Anti-Shia violence, led by extremist militant groups, dates to 1979 and has resulted in thousands killed and injured in terrorist attacks over the years. Hazara Shia, who are both an ethnic and a religious minority, make an easy target for extremist groups as they are physically distinctive. The majority live in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan in central Pakistan, where they have become largely ghettoised into two areas as result of ongoing attacks. Studies on the Hazara Shia persecution have mostly focused on the killings of Hazara men and paid little attention to the nature and impact of religious persecution of Shias on Hazara women. Poor Hazara women in particular face multi-layered marginalisation, due to the intersection of their gender, religious-ethnic affiliation and class, and face limited opportunities in education and jobs, restricted mobility, mental and psychological health issues, and gender-based discrimination.

This article interrogates whether we should consider ‘religious marginality’ as a qualifier much like the exploration of how gender, ethnicity, and class inequalities are explored when examining Covid-19-related vulnerabilities and their implications for building back better. Drawing on a case study of Pakistan as well as evidence from India, Uganda, and Iraq, this article explores the accentuation of vulnerabilities in Pakistan and how different religious minorities experience the impact of the interplay of class, caste, ethnicity, and religious marginality. The article argues that where religious minorities exist in contexts where the broader political and societal policy is one of religious ‘othering’ and where religious marginality intersects with socioeconomic exclusion, they experience particular forms of vulnerability associated directly or indirectly with Covid-19 consequences that are acute and dire in impact. Building back better for religiously inclusive societies will require both broad-based as well as more specific redress of inequalities.

This paper discusses inequalities caused or exacerbated by religious diversity in displacement and how humanitarian action can be aware of and responsive to this. It is based on interviews with Shi’a Hazara refugees from Afghanistan and local, national and international providers of humanitarian support in Pakistan.

The Shia Hazaras in Pakistan are one of the most persecuted religious minorities. According to a 2019 report produced by the National Commission for Human Rights, a government formed commission, at least 509 Hazaras have been killed since 2013 (NCHR 2018: 2). According to one of the Vice Chairs of the Human Rights Commission Pakistan, the country's leading human rights watchdog, between 2009 and 2014, nearly 1,000 Hazaras were killed in sectarian violence (Butt 2014). The present population of Shia Hazaras is the result of three historical migrations from Afghanistan (Hashmi 2016: 2). The first phase of migration occurred in 1880 1901 when Abd al Rahman Khan came to power in 1880 in Afghanistan and declared war against the Hazaras as a result of a series of revolts they made against the regime.

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