Rising Restrictions on Religion, a recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, finds that restrictions on religious beliefs and practices rose between mid-2006 and mid-2009 in 23 of the world’s 198 countries (12%), decreased in 12 countries (6%) and remained essentially unchanged in 163 countries (82%).

Because several countries with increasing restrictions on religion are very populous, however, the increases affect a much larger share of people than of states. More than 2.2 billion people – nearly a third (32%) of the world’s total population of 6.9 billion – live in countries where either government restrictions on religion or social hostilities involving religion rose substantially over the three-year period studied.

Explore the report using the table of contents to the right or the resources below.

Quick Links:

Full Report: Read through the preface, executive summary, report chapters and methodology.

Summary of Results: Read the questions and various possible answers used to code the 198 countries and territories in this report. See the number and percentage of countries that fell into each category for each question.

Changes in Restrictions Among the 25 Most Populous Countries: Explore an interactive graphic that shows how government restrictions and social hostilities changed among the 25 most populous countries in the world from mid-2006 to mid-2009.  Located in the Executive Summary.

Table: Government Restrictions Index: See all 198 countries and territories in descending order of their scores on the Pew Forum’s index of government restrictions on religion as of mid-2009.

Table: Social Hostilities Index: See all 198 countries and territories in descending order of their scores on the Pew Forum’s index of social hostilities involving religion as of mid-2009.

Results by Country: See tables showing the results for each of the 198 countries and territories on the 20 questions that comprise the Pew Forum's Government Restrictions Index and the 13 questions that comprise the Social Hostilities Index. There also is a table showing the results for one additional government question that was only coded for the period ending in mid-2009 on whether any level of government penalizes blasphemy, apostasy or the defamation of religion.

Press Release: Read the Aug. 9, 2011, press release.

2009 Report: A December 2009 report, Global Restrictions on Religion, established baseline levels of religious restrictions in 198 countries due both to government actions and to acts of violence and intimidation by private individuals, organizations and social groups.

Graphics:

Download all the graphics and charts created for this report as a .zip file (1.4MB 50 graphics). 

Featured Images:
Click on an image to view it

 

Downloadable PDFs:

Download the full report as a PDF (7.21MB 117 pages) 

Download the Summary of Results as a PDF (1.03MB 21 pages) 

Download the Results by Country as a PDF (1.01MB 48 pages) 

Download the Index Scores by Region as a PDF (951KB 7 pages) 

This report is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project.