About this site

This is a static site hosted on GitHub Pages. There is no application server. Country pages and index data are generated from structured source records and updated automatically via GitHub Actions.

What the map shows

The map uses color-coded markers to reflect country-level persecution severity: red for Extreme/Very High, orange for High, yellow for Moderate, and blue for Low. Clicking a country opens a page with historical background, modern context, data fields (scores and statistics when available), recent incident samples, and linked sources.

Data sources

This project relies on publicly available reports and feeds. Country pages reference the specific reports used for each entry. The table below matches the source chips shown on the site footer.

Abbr	Source	What it covers
OD	Open Doors World Watch List	Annual ranking of countries where Christians face the most persecution
UC	USCIRF Annual Reports	U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom country reports
FH	Freedom House Freedom in the World	Political rights and civil liberties ratings
SD	U.S. State Dept IRF Reports	International Religious Freedom country reports
OHCHR	OHCHR Universal Human Rights Index	UN human rights recommendations related to religion
GDELT	GDELT	Recent news events mentioning Christian persecution
OWID	Our World in Data	Christian population share and counts (Pew-based)
MSN	Morning Star News	Incident reporting focused on Christian persecution
VID	Violent Incidents Database	Aggregated violence statistics against Christians
GCR	Global Christian Relief	Persecution statistics and advocacy reporting
ACN	Aid to the Church in Need	Religious freedom and Persecuted and Forgotten reporting
CSW	Christian Solidarity Worldwide	Freedom of religion or belief advocacy and incident reports
ICC	International Christian Concern	Global persecution news and Global Persecution Index
F18	Forum 18	Freedom of religion or belief news, focused on former Soviet and related regions
MEC	Middle East Concern	FoRB advocacy and incident reporting for the Middle East and North Africa
BW	Bitter Winter	FoRB news with coverage of China and related repression
RI	Release International	Advocacy and news for persecuted Christians worldwide
Pew	Pew Research Center	Religious landscape and restriction studies
BBC	BBC News	Documented news reporting on persecution events
NE	Natural Earth	Public domain map boundaries for the interactive map
VD	V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy)	FoRB indicators (CC BY-SA); country subset archived under `data/archives/vdem/`

Source status key (shown on the site footer):

OK — source fetched successfully Partial — partial data retrieved Error — fetch failed Skipped — not yet fetched

Archived research materials

A one-time archive under data/archives/ stores legally redistributable research used to enrich country pages:

U.S. State Department IRF country chapters (U.S. government works)
USCIRF annual report PDF and country pages (U.S. government works)
Open Doors World Watch Research persecution-dynamics dossiers (free use/distribution with © Open Doors International attribution)
V-Dem FoRB indicator subset (CC BY-SA)

See data/archives/NOTICE for license details. Country pages cite these sources and may show short excerpts; they do not republish full report bodies.

Update workflow

A GitHub Actions workflow runs daily (and on manual dispatch). It fetches external sources, regenerates country pages and JSON assets, runs tests, commits data updates, and deploys the public site to the gh-pages branch. Same-repo pull requests get a sticky preview link under /pr-preview/pr-N/.

Primary sources (Open Doors, Freedom House, OWID, USCIRF, State Dept) gate the job: if any fail, generate/deploy abort. Secondary sources (GDELT, OHCHR, MSN, VID, GCR, ACN, CSW, ICC, Forum 18, MEC, Bitter Winter, Release International) enrich when available and never abort deploy. Only public site files are uploaded to Pages — not scrape caches under data/fetched/ (runtime-only; not tracked in git).

Privacy and access

This site does not collect personal data. Map tiles come from CARTO/OpenStreetMap; Leaflet and Lunr are self-hosted under assets/vendor/. If you use an ad blocker, map tiles may still be affected.

Attribution note: This project is unaffiliated with any government, NGO, or religious organization listed as a source. Source information remains the property of each provider and is subject to their terms and attribution requirements.

About the creator

This site was created by Joey as a companion tool for SIT — Solidarietà Internazionale Trinitaria, the Trinitarian Order’s international solidarity ministry supporting persecuted Christians worldwide. SIT works to raise awareness and provide concrete aid to Christians facing persecution because of their faith.

Contributing

Edits are tracked in the repository as structured data. To suggest a source, correction, or new country entry, open an issue or pull request. See the README for the fetch → collect → generate → pytest workflow.

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