Christians were significantly affected by widespread displacement in 2024 and faced targeting or killings by warring parties and Islamic terror groups, according to a report from a religious freedom watchdog organization.
The United States-based International Christian Concern (ICC) released its "2025 Global Persecution Index" on Thursday, emphasizing “the most egregious violators of religious freedom in 2024.”
In Sudan, more than 8 million people have been displaced since the outbreak of war in 2023, with both warring sides “attacking religious sites, killing religious leaders, and disrupting religious practices across the country.”
The report cites United Nations statistics, revealing that approximately 3.3 million people living in the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger were displaced at the beginning of 2024 due to the rise of Islamic terror groups replacing failed governments. The Sahel region includes Chad, Eritrea, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.
In northern Nigeria, Christian communities frequently face attacks from Islamic extremists like the Islamic State West Africa Province and radicalized Fulani militants, resulting in the deaths of thousands in recent years.
The report documented that the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 358,000 people in the violence-ridden Democratic Republic of the Congo were displaced in January 2024 alone. The ICC attributes some of the unrest in the DRC to the Allied Democratic Forces, a militant group with “jihadist ideology.”
While it noted that the DRC's Christian-majority population means that some attacks may not be motivated by religion, the report pointed out that “the ADF is known to target churches and church leaders.”
The DRC and the Sahel region were classified in the “red zone” by the religious freedom advocacy group, indicating areas “where Christians are regularly tortured or killed for their faith.” Other regions placed in the “red zone” include Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Pakistan.
The report identified four countries as part of the “orange zone,” indicating that their governments “severely oppress the rights of Christians.” These include China, India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Additionally, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Russia, and Vietnam were categorized in the “yellow zone,” where “Christians endure attacks, arrest, and oppression.”
While the report painted a bleak picture of global religious freedom, it also pointed to “popular discontent with repression” as a positive development in 2024.
This included the Spring 2024 elections in India, where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) “found itself with a significantly reduced electoral mandate,” leading it to “form a coalition with several other parties to assemble a government in Parliament.” The ICC identified the BJP as one of the “groups/entities” causing the most harm in India, stressing that it reduces Christians and religious minorities to second-class status.
In Myanmar, the military junta led by extremist Buddhists known as the Tatmadaw continues to rule after overthrowing the democratically elected government in 2021. The ICC noted that the junta's violence has united various ethnoreligious minorities, who achieved significant military victories against the junta in 2024.
In Iran, the ICC highlighted the election of “relatively moderate politicians, such as Masoud Pezeshikian in 2024,” as a sign of a “popular uprising” suggesting that “the [theocratic] regime's control is not absolute.”
