Cases of religious rights violations in Nicaragua in 2025 jumped to 309, up from 222 documented in the prior year, a new report by a Christian advocacy group shows.
A pastor was briefly detained in Cuba after uploading a Bible teaching video on YouTube, while the 16-year-old son of another church leader on the island remains in custody after being accused of participating in a protest march, an advocacy group reported.
In a rare prosecution in Nigeria, nine Fulani herdsmen are on trial for their role in the massacre of more than 200 Christians in Yelwata, Benue state last year, as the U.S. administration is considering a bilateral agreement to combat persecution.
Authorities in Iran arrested 254 Christians on charges related to their faith or religious activities in 2025, nearly twice as many as the figure of 139 detained the previous year, a new report shows.
The regime of Vladimir Putin is using the Russian Orthodox Church in efforts to repress other faiths not only in Ukraine and other foreign countries but within Russia’s borders, clergy and rights defenders said.
China is helping totalitarian regimes to repress religion around the world, even as the U.S. administration has cut or stalled programs vital for religious freedom globally, officials told a hearing of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Record numbers of people are displaced by conflict and persecution worldwide, and they continue to face extraordinary obstacles to religious freedom as refugees, advocates told the sixth annual International Religious Freedom Summit this week.
The daughter of a pastor imprisoned in China told the sixth annual International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C. on Monday (Feb. 2) that she may never see her father again but maintains hope and faith in God.
Officials in a village in southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state detained for five days and then expelled a Protestant pastor for refusing to participate in Catholic church rituals, according to a U.K-based advocacy group.
Syria broke into the top 10 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian for the first time in nearly a decade in Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List (WWL) as more than 388 million Christians worldwide faced high levels of persecution or discrimination last year.
Two Christians in Iran sentenced to prison for their faith were locked up on Dec. 16 and 20, and a Christian woman was summoned to begin serving her five-year prison term two days before Christmas, an advocacy group stated.
A Christian convert who recently fractured her spine after falling from a bunkbed in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison has been sentenced to 17 years in prison on charges related to practicing her faith, according to human rights groups.
