Open Doors Canada has released their 2025 World Watch List.
The World Watch list ranks the 50 countries in the world where it's most dangerous to live as a Christian.
"We have different criteria that we use," said Gary Stagg, executive director of Open Doors Canada. "We do research throughout the year to determine the state of Christian persecution. And then once a year, we rank the top 50 countries where people live with the most persecution."
380 million Christians around the world experience high levels of persecution and discrimination because of their faith in Jesus, which is why Stagg says it's important to make this list public.
"I think it's important for people in Canada to have the list because it just reminds us that we need to be in prayer for our persecuted family members," Stagg explained. "The other reason is we also use the list to inform people in power of what's happening. So every year we take the research from the World Watch list and present it at Parliament Hill."
This year, North Korea took the top spot on the list followed by Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Sudan.
"In countries like Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, where we've seen a real clamp down on Christians for a while, it looks like things are getting a little easier for them," said Stagg. "We saw a lot of violence last year towards Christians in some of those countries because of authoritarianism. With that authoritarianism you also get paranoia from leaders and so on, that they're afraid people are going to rise up, and so on. So Christians, want to keep them down and keep them in their place."
The other trend Stagg says they noticed is that many churches are going underground.
"China would be an example of that, whereas for many years, Chinese Christians were able to function and worship fairly easily in what they call house churches but now the government has clamped down on them since COVID," Stagg explained. "A lot of them closed during that time and have not been able to start up again causing the church to go underground and that presents challenges for our work and for them."
Stagg says it is important for Canadians to listen to the stories and pray for those being persecuted.
"I think the main thing that we can do here in Canada is to not ignore their story because it may be our story someday and we can look to them as real-life examples of what it means to live for Jesus, in a world that's hostile towards our faith," said Stagg. "The other important thing, the most important thing is that we pray for our brothers and sisters."
A special presentation of the 2025 World Watch List will take place on Mar. 19 for Canadian Members of Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario.
A full list of resources including the 2025 World Watch list and how to pray for the persecuted church can be found here.