The cause of Christians striving to practise their faith without fear or pressure often advances and retreats in countries outside those where Christians directly live under the most oppression. In London, New York, Strasbourg, Washington, and other centres of deliberation, important developments happen concerning Christians and religious freedom more broadly. This is the page where we consolidate news with an international scope.
COVID-19 exacerbates discrimination against minority Christians globally
• Christians refused coronavirus aid in countries from India to Yemen to West Africa • COVID-19 legitimises increased surveillance and restrictions by authoritarian governments • Organised criminal groups use virus as means to extend their control, including over churches • Nationalism driven by majority religious identity rises in countries such […]
Church surveillance, COVID-19 controls affect China’s Christians – 1 of 5 global trends
The emergency that dominated the globe during the past year — the novel coronavirus — also dominated the countries of the World Watch List published by Open Doors International today (Jan 13) and the lives of the estimated 340 million Christians […]
“Why don’t these black lives matter?”
The question of the UK’s Lord Alton on a new UN Day recognised for only the second time this year, the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, 22 August. Until 2019, there has […]
UN Sec. General’s “biggest data gap in the world” affects persecuted Christian women
The UN Secretary-General last week called it ‘the biggest data gap in the world…what UK writer Caroline Criado Perez calls “default man” thinking: the unquestioned assumption that men are standard, and women the exception. Very often, women are not counted, and their experiences don’t count”. And this lack of ‘counting’ […]
Violent Islamist militancy spreads into weak states across sub-Saharan Africa
The newly-released annual World Watch List (WWL) of the top 50 countries in which it is most difficult to live as a Christian shows that, especially in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, the rise of Islamist militancy has become a challenge not only to Christians, but also to the existence […]
Risk of persecution going digital with rise of surveillance state
A case can be made that today there are more Christians in China than members of the Communist Party. China comes no. 23 in the Open Doors World Watch List of the top 50 countries in which it’s most difficult to live as a Christian which was published today. Last […]
From sub-Saharan Africa to China, Christians experience ‘high’ levels of persecution
• In Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday more than 250 people, 45 of them children, were killed in attacks on three churches and hotels; more than 500 people were injured. • Bombs killed 20 at a Catholic church in Jolo in the southern Philippines. • In China, state-sanctioned and ‘underground’ […]
Christians in Africa face ‘explosion’ in violence, senior church leader says
Violence against Christians in Africa “is exploding”, according to a senior church leader in the Central African Republic. In Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mozambique there has been an increase in attacks on Christians, including church leaders and churches in recent weeks, said Cardinal Dieudonne Nzapalainga in an interview with the […]
‘In context of gender justice, women’s right to freedom of religion pretty much ignored’
She is a woman who can be identified only as “Z”, for her security. She is a Christian in India, a country that is overwhelmingly Hindu. And she is a lawyer defending women and youth from exploitation by landlords and employers, so she was pleased when she got the opportunity […]
For persecuted Christian women, violence is compounded by ‘shaming’
It would be hard to argue the world is unaware that Islamic State fighters used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war against Iraq’s Yazidi women: Nadia Murad shared the 2018 Nobel Prize after she told the world of her personal ordeal at their hands. However, testimonies from […]