The Crisis
We think donors deserve the real picture, not a simplified one. Here's what independent monitors have documented — the killings, the displacement, the hunger, and where experts disagree on causes.
Christian persecution
Open Doors, an independent monitor that has tracked global Christian persecution for decades, found that of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for their faith in the latest reporting period, more were killed in Nigeria than in every other country on earth combined.1 Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is now described by researchers as the epicenter of anti-Christian violence globally, with the region's violence score nearly doubling over the past decade.1
You may see the figure "52,000+ Christians killed in Nigeria" circulating on social media. That number comes from a different source than the annual figures above: a 2023 report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law estimated roughly 52,250 Christians killed over a 14-year period (roughly 2009–2023), not in a single year.8 We list both here because they answer different questions — "how bad was last year" versus "how bad has the last decade-and-a-half been" — and conflating them makes either number easy to misquote or dismiss. We link both figures to their original sources rather than picking whichever sounds more dramatic.
Where it's happening
Violence is concentrated in the north and the "Middle Belt," a band of states where the mostly-Muslim north meets the mostly-Christian south.
Where experts disagree
This matters, and we don't want to oversimplify it. Analysts broadly agree on two overlapping but distinct drivers of violence in Nigeria:
Islamist militancy — groups including Boko Haram, ISWAP, and newer factions explicitly target Christian communities, churches, and converts from Islam as part of a stated religious agenda.1
Farmer–herder land conflict — separately, the southward migration of Fulani herders in search of grazing land has fueled violent clashes with mostly-Christian farming communities over land and water. Some researchers caution this conflict is often "oversimplified" in media coverage, and that an explicitly Islamist militant Fulani faction has emerged alongside the older land dispute.3
Independent monitoring by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa found Christians are approximately 2.7 times more likely to be killed than Muslims in attacks attributed to Fulani militants — evidence that even where land and resources are part of the story, religious identity shapes who is targeted.3 At the same time, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria has cautioned that the violence has spread across most of the country and cannot be attributed to a single cause or community.5 The Nigerian government has been reluctant to formally characterize the violence as religious persecution, in part over concern about international designations and possible sanctions.1
Our position: whatever the precise mix of causes in a given attack, the people affected need protection and care now. We fund response to documented violence and let the research on root causes continue without waiting on it.
Poverty, hunger & displacement
Attacks in farming communities don't just take lives. They destroy crops, livestock, and an entire growing season, pushing already-poor families further down — often permanently off land their families have farmed for generations. The United Nations estimates more than 3.5 million people are internally displaced across Nigeria, one of Africa's largest and most overlooked humanitarian crises, with malnutrition among children under five now a serious concern in affected regions.5
Widows & orphans
When militants kill the men in a household, the burden of survival falls on widows and children who often have no independent income, no land title in their own name, and, in Nigerian culture, sometimes face rejection or blame from their late husband's family rather than support.6 A 2023 study by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that interviewed more than 2,100 survivors of Boko Haram violence found that well over half identified as widowed mothers or orphaned children of victims — evidence of just how concentrated this kind of loss becomes within affected communities.7
This is why "widow and orphan relief" is one of our core funding categories, not an afterthought: trauma counseling, school fees, vocational training, and small business grants specifically designed for women rebuilding a household alone.
Emergency response funding reaches partner churches and families within days of a documented attack.
Give to Emergency ResponseFigures are the most recent publicly available at time of writing and should be re-verified against primary sources before publishing this site live, as reporting periods are updated annually.