A new report from a Catholic charity that supports persecuted Christians has found that violence and religious persecution is forcing Christians to flee their homes.
Aid to the Church in Need’s Persecuted and Forgotten? A report on Christians oppressed for their faith 2024-2026, released Tuesday, found that the situation for Christians has gotten worse in 10 of the 18 countries surveyed, including Nigeria, China, and Pakistan.
“Millions of Christians are part of a mass exodus of those displaced in conflict zones, some of it religiously motivated,” the report writes. “This has spread, turning entire swathes of countries in Africa and Asia into danger zones.”
At least one million Christians have been forced from their home in Nigeria alone, the report states, and extremist violence is also displacing people in Burkina Faso and Sudan.
The report finds that in Burkina Faso, militant Islamist groups have seized 40 percent of the landmass, and in one diocese 2000 people had left in a year.
Persecuted and Forgotten? stated that sub-Saharan Africa is now one of the most dangerous areas in the world to be a Christian.
Six of the ten highest-ranked countries in the Global Terrorism Index are African, and Christians in northern Nigeria, the Sahel region, and Mozambique have been targeted by extremist groups.
“Persecution has become a huge, yet often hidden, factor driving entire communities from their homes, changing the religious demography of entire regions, especially in Africa. What will it take for the world to act?” John Pontifex, ACN (UK) Head of Press and Public Affairs, said.
“Twenty years after we first launched Persecuted and Forgotten? we can say that the oppression of Christians remains a human rights catastrophe the world refuses to acknowledge,” Pontifex added.
“People are still forced to deny their faith – bullied in the classroom, discriminated in the workplace and denied justice in the courts – and, in some cases, make the ultimate sacrifice,” he said.
In Syria, Church leaders have warned that the demographic decline of Christians is an existential threat, with the Christian population reported to have decreased by 80 percent since 2011.
State repression and other forms of persecution
The report also investigated countries where state apparatus is oppressing Christians.
In China, underground churches have become more restricted by government control while Nicaragua has seen Christian leaders exiled and imprisoned.
Arrests of Christians in Iran have doubled. In India the rise of anti-conversion laws and Hindutva nationalism contributed to a number of attacks of Christians.
In Pakistan, the country’s infamous blasphemy laws and the forced conversion and marriage of Christian girls, creates an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.
Peter Bhatti, the brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, a Pakistani Catholic politician murdered by extremists in 2011, told Crux Now Christians live in fear in Pakistan.
“Christians of Pakistan continue living under constant threat from extremism. There is a lot of fear because of the blasphemy laws and the forced conversions of young Christian girls. Christians don’t have any choice and they are surviving,” he said.
“Forced conversion is very common for young Christian and Hindu girls. What happens is that if any person, especially from the Muslim community, wants to fulfill their sexual desire, they approach a Christian girl in their area,” he explained.
“They abduct that girl, then they rape her, and then to cover the crime, they marry her and convert her to Islam. They present that marriage certificate to the court and then the court cannot bring that person to justice that they have raped someone and committed a crime,” he added.
This is the tenth edition of Persecuted and Forgotten?, which was started in 2006.
