Open Doors International, an institution dedicated to the study of the reality of persecuted Christians around the world, has recently launched the World Watch List 2022 – Reporting period: 01-10-2020 to 30-09-2021.
Among the top 10 countries with an extreme degree of persecution are Afghanistan, North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and India.
On the other hand, three Latin American countries are part of the top 50 countries in the world where it is most difficult to be a Christian. Colombia ranks 30th, Cuba 37th and Mexico 43rd. In both Mexico and Colombia, Christians are vulnerable to organized crime, repression inside indigenous communities and a highly secularized context that sometimes endangers the free manifestation of the Christian faith in the public sphere. In Cuba, the communist government is primarily responsible for repressive actions against religious leaders and religious communities critical of the regime. Especially after the demonstrations of July 2021, church leaders were arrested and tortured for speaking out against the regime.
The 2022 ranking for other Latin American countries, outside the top 50, but still particularly difficult to be a Christian includes Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Venezuela.
The World Watch List is produced by World Watch Research, the research department of Open Doors. More information can be found on its Open Doors Analytical website. It has a compilation of the main documents, a section with the complete dossiers of all the countries mentioned in the WWL 2022 and an explanation of the methodology. The password for access to these documents is freedom.
