Nigeria, Rwanda, China, Mozambique and Mexico were the most dangerous countries for Christians from 2023-2025 in five distinct categories of persecution, Global Christian Relief (GCR) said in its second annual Red List.
Nigeria leads in the category of killings, with 590 documented and verified killings from the study period of November 2023 – October 2025, GCR said, based on a total number of 1,972 killing in the top five countries in the category. Following are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 447 killings, Ethiopia with 177 killings, Russia with 167 killings, and Mozambique with 94.
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The White House added Nigeria to the U.S. State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern in 2025, guilty of egregious and unchecked religious persecution, based on the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. In December, the U.S. launched at least 16 Tomahawk missiles on targets in northwest Nigeria, but the impact has not been disclosed.
Violence and intimidation against churches, arrests and detentions, forced displacement and assaults or abductions complete the categories studied, with five top countries named in each category. Additionally, the 2026 Red List overlaps 2024 data included in the 2025 Red List, and some of the categories of persecution overlap within each report, GCR said in releasing the data Jan. 8.
“Persecution today does not always arrive in obvious or dramatic ways,” GCR President and CEO Brian Orme said in describing the categories. “Often it unfolds quietly — through pressure that restricts worship, through laws that narrow religious space, or through systems that steadily erode the ability of Christians to live openly as followers of Jesus.
“In other cases, persecution is unmistakably violent, displacing communities and leaving visible destruction in its wake. These pressures repeat, overlap, and deepen over time.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Diana Chandler and originally published by Baptist Press.
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