Key findings about religious restrictions around the world in 2021
The most common kinds of government restrictions on religion in 2021 included harassment of religious groups and interference in worship.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The most common kinds of government restrictions on religion in 2021 included harassment of religious groups and interference in worship.
Around a fifth (21%) of the 198 countries evaluated banned at least one religion-related group in 2019, our analysis found.
Social hostilities around the world involving religion declined in 2019 to the lowest level in five years.
Government restrictions in 2018 were at their highest level since 2007, when Pew Research Center began tracking these trends.
The Center’s tenth report on religious restrictions around the world focuses on trends in restrictions from 2007 to 2017.
In 2016, seven nations – Turkey, Brunei, Ethiopia, France, Hungary, Niger and Tunisia – directly used emergency laws to restrict religion, according to Pew Research Center’s latest annual religious restrictions study. While a number of different religious groups were targeted, these laws imposed restrictions on Muslims more than any other group.
While sub-Saharan Africa had fewer religious restrictions than many other parts of the world in 2015, it experienced a larger increase than any other region.
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