More than 388 million Christians – or one in seven believers worldwide – face “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith”, according to a new report. Source: OSV News.
Open Doors International, a global advocacy organisation for persecuted Christians, released the figure as part of its World Watch List 2026 report, an annual overview that measures the severity of Christian persecution in some 50 countries.
For the 24th consecutive year, North Korea remains the harshest country in which to practice the Christian faith, due to a national policy that bans worship of any other entity beside the ruling Kim regime, said the report.
If found to be one of the 400,000 estimated Christians in North Korea, “you and your family could be immediately executed or sent to a terrible labour camp – forever,” said Open Doors, pointing to that nation’s 2020 “anti-reactionary thought law,” which has “made it even clearer that being a Christian and owning a Bible is a serious crime.”
Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Libya and Iran also have “extreme” levels of Christian persecution, said Open Doors, which traces its origins to one man’s postwar efforts to smuggle Bibles into the former Soviet Union.
In Nigeria, close to 3500 Christians were killed over the past year, according to the report. Among those slain have been several priests, with abductions of Christians also escalating in that nation.
Most of the countries topping Open Doors’ 2026 list are located on the African continent and in Southeast Asia, with a handful in Central and South America.
Measuring Christian persecution – which Open Doors defines as “any hostility experienced as a result of one’s identification with Christ” – is a “complex task,” since the phenomenon is “multidimensional” and can encompass other factors such as gender and ethnicity, the organisation notes on its website.
FULL STORY
Report: More than 388 million Christians worldwide face ‘high levels’ of persecution (By Gina Christian, OSV News)
