Report: 380 Million Christians Suffer ‘High Levels of Persecution’

ROME — Christian persecution spiked around the globe in 2024, with more than 380 million Christians suffering high levels of persecution and discrimination, according to a report released Wednesday.

The human rights watchdog group Open Doors has published its World Watch List 2025, which ranks the fifty countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian.

Among the grim statistics included in the annual report were the murders of 4,476 Christians for their faith, the profanation of 7,679 Christian churches and buildings, and the striking number of Christians around world who face high levels of persecution and discrimination: more than 380 million.

Worldwide, one in seven Christians is persecuted. For Christians in Africa, the number is higher still: a full 20 percent live in persecution. Meanwhile in Asia, two in five Christians are persecuted for their faith, an astonishing 40 percent.

Topping the World Watch List is once again North Korea, which also occupied the number one spot in the 2023 WWL findings.

North Korea is an officially atheist country run by a brutal communist regime that is particularly hostile to Christians. As WWL notes, being discovered to be a Christian in North Korea is effectively a death sentence.

Outed Christians are either killed on the spot or deported to labor camps as political criminals, where they face a life of hard labor that few survive, the report observes. Tens of thousands of Christians are estimated to be held in labor camps across the country.

In North Korea, Christians have no freedom, and it is nearly impossible for believers to gather or meet to worship. Even possessing a Bible is a serious crime that will be severely punished, the report states.

Last year, Ryan Brown, the CEO of Open Doors US, offered the unsettling observation that autocratic governments around the world have been increasingly “taking pages out of the North Korean playbook or even Chinese playbook” and are becoming “more and more intrusive in the lives of individual citizens.”

Persecution in eight out of the top ten countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian is fueled by radical Islam, which continues to be the most powerful driver of Christian persecution around the globe.

In Muslim Somalia, for instance, which ranks second on the list, “following Jesus is a matter of life and death,” the report states.

The militant Muslim terror group al-Shabab, headquartered in Somalia, has repeatedly expressed its desire to eradicate Christians from the country, and when discovered, believers are often killed on the spot.

This group enforces a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law) and has increasingly focused on finding and eliminating Christian leaders from the country.

Nigeria, which ranks number 7 on the list, also merits a special mention, since more Christians “are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world,” the report notes.

Jihadist violence continues to escalate in Nigeria, and Christians are at serious risk from targeted attacks by Islamist militants, including Fulani raiders, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province), putting Nigeria at the epicenter of targeted violence against the church.

The government’s failure to protect Christians and punish perpetrators has only strengthened the militants’ influence.

While Christians used to be vulnerable only in the Muslim-majority states in the north, violence has spread into the Middle Belt and even further south.

Thomas D. Williams is Breitbart News Rome Bureau Chief and the author of The Coming Christian Persecution: Why Things Are Getting Worse and How to Prepare for What Is to Come.