By Open Doors Southern Africa
With World Children’s Day, which is celebrated on Wednesday November 20, to commemorate the United Nations 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the spotlight falls again on children worldwide and improving their welfare.
It is, therefore, shocking to learn that the persecution of Christian children is rising rapidly all over the world and that they often pay a terrible price for their parents’ Christian faith. In many countries that are hostile towards the Christian faith, the children of Christians and church leaders are targeted with serious violent persecution and treated as commodities.
In countries with persecution, children are extremely vulnerable to persecution, especially in areas with ongoing conflict. Christian boys are often forced to join military groups, and girls are exposed to human trafficking, sexual violence and forced marriages.
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Shocking new research
These are some of the findings of a shocking new report by the ministry organisation, Open Doors International. The report, titled Excluded: Social isolation of Christian children and youth, describes the extreme persecution children in countries prone to persecution are facing because of their faith.
The report covers the findings on persecuted children and youth in the top 76 countries on the Open Doors World Watch List (WWL), which is an annual list of the countries in the world where it is the most difficult to be a Christian, with persecution being very high or extreme. For the study and report, children and youth were considered to be individuals under the age of 18 years.
The research shows that Christian children and youth are socially excluded in 72% of the top 50 countries where Christians face the highest levels of persecution for their faith. For many, their experience of living out their faith in a context of high persecution and discrimination is profoundly lonely and isolating – they are rejected by others and lack help and support.
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Patterns of social exclusion were seen in 72% of the WWL top 50 countries. Verbal harassment, a key tool of exclusion, was seen in 92% of the WWL top 50 countries.
When children and teenagers are discovered to be Christian converts or publicly declare their faith, they often experience expulsion from their communities, leading to social ostracisation. This social exclusion has ripple effects on various aspects of their lives, including access to education and shared community resources.
Most important findings
The most important findings from the report are:
Faith: Social exclusion harms the ability of Christian children and youth to grow in their faith and fragments the persecuted church across the world. “The potential consequences, including expulsion from their families and communities, effectively inhibit the freedom of young Christians to actively engage with their faith,” a country expert on the Comoros shares. Christian children and youth need connection to other people and community to help them stay strong in their faith.
Wellbeing: Isolation and social exclusion impact young people’s sense of belonging and identity, shaping their mental health and psychosocial wellbeing for years to come. Suffering social exclusion in childhood or adolescence is linked to negative repercussions on mental and emotional health, including mental health challenges such as depression, decreased self-esteem, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, poor sleep quality and feelings of worthlessness.
Physical health: There is evidence that social exclusion can also contribute to physical health problems, ranging from heightened stress to a weakened immune system. It can increase the risk of developing dementia by up to 50% and stroke and cardiovascular disease by 30%.
Relationships: Children and youth rely on the protection of adults and often lack the physical and legal resources to protect themselves. Loss of this “safety net” due to exclusion and isolation makes young people additionally vulnerable. Isolated children and youth are at greater risk of exploitation, including other forms of persecution pressure such as trafficking, targeted seduction, grooming and sexual exploitation.
Opportunities: Social isolation and exclusion from communities can seriously restrict educational and livelihood opportunities for young Christians. Christian children and young people can be denied formal education, ending up stuck in high-risk, low-income professions. Once in the world of work, systemic exclusion also impacts their access to stable employment. Such patterns, as a result of social exclusion, embed cycles of stigma and poverty, exacerbating the marginalisation of Christians.
Top 10 pressure points
Four years of specific religious persecution research on Christian children and youth show consistent patterns of persecution and discrimination that are isolating, identity-shaping and harsh.
The top 10 pressure points for children and youth in the top 50 WWL countries are:
- Discrimination/harassment via education.
- Psychological violence.
- Verbal violence.
- Denied access to Christian religious materials, teachings and rites.
- Denied access to a Christian parent.
- Physical violence.
- Denied access to social community/networks.
- Denied legal identity as a Christian.
- Forced marriage.
- Sexual violence.
Discrimination/harassment via education remains the top pressure point over the last four years of children and youth-specific research, and it was identified in each one of the WWL top 50 countries during the last two years.
Psychological violence is a persistent challenge, often reflecting the pressure on Christian children and youth to conform to the majority religion, as well as the pressure and threats placed on young converts.
Overall, the top 10 highlights how vulnerable children and youth are to persecution, especially those who belong to marginalised groups.
Patterns of exclusion
From this research on how Christian children and teenagers experience faith-based persecution, the following patterns of exclusion were observed:
From peers: Christian children can experience extensive bullying through their years at school, with classmates mocking the way they pray and harassing them for their beliefs. Christian pupils who are a religious and ethnic minority may experience targeted abuse. Examples from countries such as Malaysia, Myanmar and Morocco underline how Christian young people are alienated by their social groups.
From the family or the state: Control exerted over the lives of young people, either by their families or by the state, can compound social exclusion. In Algeria and China, state restrictions on Christian places of worship and gatherings prevent, in particular, Christians under the age of 18 from meeting with other Christians. In other places, Christian youth are held back from a social community by their families. House arrest can be used as a tool for social exclusion, with children and young people being locked in a room or banned from contact with others.
From the community or wider family: As a child, being excluded by your community is not only an isolating process, but one that shapes your understanding of your identity in relation to the world around you. Young Christian converts in parts of Asia are likely to be, at the least, shunned by their wider family and may even be formally expelled from the community. In many regions of the world, young people who have chosen to become Christians may be disowned from their family group, and social ties to wider family members may be broken due to their faith.
From authority figures: Those who hold power in the lives of children and young people, such as teachers or youth group leaders, possess the ability to lift up or bring down. In places like Cameroon, India and Central Asia, authority figures abuse their power to shame and persecute young Christians, which gives others permission to join in the abuse. Children of Christians can be humiliated and slandered by teachers in front of other pupils, and may be given lower grades, pressured to partake in rites linked to the majority religion or deprived of opportunities.
Within structures and institutions: Christian children and youth living in WWL countries also experience exclusion at structural and institutional levels. This may look like limited social rights or systematic neglect by authorities. For example, denying children the opportunity to have a legal identity as a Christian, or barring access to school enrolment and educational opportunities on the basis of their faith.
In Mauritania and Cuba, school-age girls and boys find that once their faith is discovered, their former friends can reject them and view them as enemies. In the Arabian Peninsula, children who have become Christians from a Muslim background can endure social ostracisation and abuse not only in the classroom, but also in public, at shopping malls and playgrounds. In the northern regions of Cameroon, children of convert parents can be shamed for their newfound faith and treated as social outcasts.
Lynette Leibach, executive director of Open Doors Southern Africa, says: “From the research findings published in the report, the negative effect on the mental wellbeing of children and youth who are isolated and targeted due to their parents’ beliefs and religion is clear. They are on a backfoot in accessing opportunities due to the lack of a safety net usually provided by supportive communities and networks of adults.
“Shockingly, the strategic targeting of girls to destroy their place of standing in the community through forced marriages and sexual violence continues. As we enter a time of celebration and sharing at the end of the year, it is pertinent that we consider how to act on behalf of those children and young people. Therefore, Open Doors is currently running a Christmas campaign to raise prayers and funds to address the needs of persecuted children and young people.”
Methodology of research
The report was authored by Open Doors World Watch Research (WWR). During the reporting period, which was from October 1 2023 to September 30 2024, Open Doors WWR monitored religious persecution dynamics in more than 100 countries. Analysts studied data from the top 76 countries where the persecution of Christians was recorded as being very high or extreme.
Data was gathered from Open Doors’ field staff and field contributors, external experts and WWR persecution analysts. As a part of the data collection process, regionally based experts collected qualitative data from trauma specialists, church leaders, focus groups and local persecution experts.
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