Our History

The story of Christian Lawyers Alliance Pakistan begins long before its founding. In 1982 a young Christian advocate, Soba Sorya, was enrolled by the Punjab Bar Council and began practising before the lower courts of Lahore. In 1996 he was enrolled with the Lahore High Court. For nearly four decades he defended Christians in civil and criminal matters, served twelve years as General Secretary of the Minority Wing Punjab, advised Pakistan Railways and the Evacuee Property Trust Board, and worked for more than ten years with the Centre for Human Rights Education. Persecuted families came to him one at a time. He saw that one lawyer was not enough.

Since then the Alliance has grown to include advocates of the Lahore High Court and the lower courts, a press office that documents attacks on Christians for the national and international press, and a scholarship programme for law students. CLAP has publicly condemned the attacks on churches in Jaranwala and Sargodha, the abduction and forced conversion of minor girls, and the misuse of the blasphemy laws, and has welcomed the Islamabad High Court's 2025 judicial commission into that misuse.