two thirds of humanity attacked for their faith

The years go by and violations against religious freedom continue. This is what Aid to the Church in Need demonstrates in its 17th report, published on October 21, 2025.

The international organization aims to defend freedom of thought, conscience and religion, defined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Freedom that Pope Leo XIV defended during a private audience given to Aid to the Church in Need on October 10, 2025: “Religious freedom is not simply a legal right or a privilege granted to us by governments (…). When this freedom is denied, the human person is deprived of the capacity to respond freely to the call of truth (…).”

The study, which looks at the situation of all religious faiths in 196 countries, from January 2023 to December 2024, shows that 62 of them violate religious freedom. This is one more than in the previous report, dated 2023.

His observation is, once again, “alarming”: 5.4 billion people live in countries that do not respect religious freedom. That’s almost two thirds of the world’s population. Among the countries concerned, 24 are classified by the organization in the category of “persecution” such as China, North Korea or Nigeria, and 38 countries are classified as “suffering religious discrimination” such as Egypt, Turkey or Vietnam.

Aid to the Church in Need underlines that attacks on religious life have increased in intensity due to the increase in conflicts and the development of new digital tools and artificial intelligence.

Millions of people on the run

Religious persecution would lead to more and more forced migrations and displacements. In Nigeria, in the Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali) or in Sudan, faith groups are seeing their populations decimated, their “places of worship destroyed, their religious heritage erased”. In Myanmar, more than 1.3 million Rohingya, mainly Muslims, have fled violence.

As a result, more than 123 million people around the world have been pushed onto the roads. Some forcibly displaced within the borders of their home countries, others seeking international protection as refugees. Minorities are decreasing, religious pluralism is eroding, room is being left to the confessional majority.

For Aid to the Church in Need, “religious persecution is a major and often overlooked driver of the current global displacement crisis.”

A rise of authoritarian regimes

Religious restrictions are deployed in a context of multiplication and consolidation of authoritarian regimes. Their oppressive power imposes “legal and bureaucratic mechanisms” to repress religious life.

China, Eritrea, Iran and Nicaragua carry out “omnipresent surveillance, restrictive legislation or repression of dissident beliefs”. The report notes that authoritarian power causes persecution in 19 countries and discrimination in 31 others.

Jihadist violence

Aid to the Church in Need describes an evolution of global jihadism, which is far from having diminished.

In West and Central Africa, groups organized in decentralized networks are rampant, controlling entire areas and targeting Christian and Muslim communities who do not adhere to their ideology.

The study specifies that these are attacks which follow a “sectarian logic”, at the heart of contemporary jihadism.

Explosion of anti-Semitic acts, increase in anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts

Anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased in Europe, North America and Latin America. These acts are the consequence of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 in Israel and the ensuing conflict in Gaza. In France, anti-Semitic acts increased by 1000% from this period according to the Jewish Community Protection Service.

The organization is based on the acts that have been the subject of a complaint. She recorded a daily average of around 25 anti-Semitic acts in the 30 days following this attack, reaching nearly 40 acts on some days. During the following three months, the number of anti-Semitic acts equaled that of the last three years combined.

As for anti-Muslim acts, they increased by 29% in 2023, indicates the National Directorate of Territorial Intelligence, with 242 acts recorded, before experiencing an equivalent drop, i.e. 173 acts in 2024.

Generally speaking, international and regional conflicts have increased in recent years, increasing violence against religious communities.

Anti-Christian acts are also on the rise in Western countries. France has counted just under 900 anti-Christian acts in 2023, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

Europe, the United States and Canada, attacks on Christian sites and faithful have been recorded. These acts are often “motivated by ideological hostility, militant activism or anti-religious extremism,” relates the report.

AI used for surveillance and repression of believers

AI and digital tools have experienced rapid development in recent years. Some countries use them with the intention of monitoring, penalizing and repressing religious groups, making the belief a security threat.

Thus, in China, the surveillance system powered by AI “identifies, tracks and oppresses religious groups and individuals labeled as ‘undesirable’”, denounces the study. While North Korea has installed a system integrated into each mobile phone which takes a screenshot every five minutes and stores it in a folder inaccessible to the user.

An instrumentalization that does not bode well when we know that AIs create or follow the biases imposed on them.