WORLD: Annual Report 2025 of Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America (OLIRE)
By Hans Noot, Associate director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (27.02.2026) – OLIRE (Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America) has just published its Annual Report 2025 researched and drafted from an academic, non-confessional and non-partisan perspective.
Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) is presenting you here the most relevant findings of the report.
Latin America 2025: Escalating Legal and Bureaucratic Repression of Religious Freedom
In 2025, freedom of religion or belief in Latin America continues to face profound challenges from both state and non-state actors. Recent reporting from regional and international monitoring bodies reveals a pattern of legal weaponization, administrative harassment, and targeted persecution directed at religious communities, particularly those perceived as independent or critical of governing authorities. These pressures manifest through “facially neutral” laws that are increasingly used to suppress independent religious expression and organizational autonomy.
Regional Trends: Lawfare Targeting Religious Organisations
A central trend this year has been the expansion of what human rights advocates describe as “lawfare,” whereby ostensibly secular legal mechanisms—Anti-Terrorism statutes, national security measures, and tax regulations—are repurposed to constrain or dismantle religious organisations. Such legal structures, while neutral in text, are being applied selectively and strategically to curtail the civic space of faith-based actors, particularly those perceived as critical of state authority. The impact is a regulatory environment in which religious communities face excessive scrutiny, prolonged litigation, and the withdrawal of legal status without transparent due process.
Concurrently, an emergent phenomenon termed the “Authoritarian Triad”—comprising Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela—illustrates coordinated strategies of repression. These states have intensified efforts to suppress independent religious voices that offer moral critiques of state policies, framing free religious discourse as a threat to national stability.
Government attempts to regulate doctrine have expanded in scope. In certain jurisdictions, ecclesiastical content—sermons, religious education, and doctrinal teaching—is subject to state review or censorship. This interference reflects a broader effort to control not only organisational legality but also the internal expression of faith, with independent religious thought increasingly treated as a political liability.
Country Profiles: Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico and Colombia
In Nicaragua, the repression of religious organisations has reached alarming levels. The regime has initiated an “administrative liquidation” process, revoking the legal status of hundreds of faith-based NGOs and stripping them of institutional legitimacy. Constitutional reforms enacted in early 2025 mandate that religious organisations operate free of “foreign control,” effectively criminalising historically rooted affiliations such as the Roman Catholic Church’s ties with the Vatican. This legal restructuring has been accompanied by direct state action against clergy, including expulsions and surveillance of pastoral activities. Such measures contribute to a climate in which public worship and civic engagement are severely constrained.
In Cuba, systematic surveillance of religious leaders has become commonplace. Religious practitioners report that state security monitors religious services, recording sermons and cataloguing expressions of faith for potential use as evidence in “incitement” or related charges. State policy extends beyond overt coercion; it includes “soft” repression that denies adherents employment, educational opportunities, and access to public services on the basis of religious affiliation or activity.
Mexico and Colombia face a different yet connected set of pressures. In areas dominated by criminal governance—particularly where cartels and armed paramilitary groups hold territorial control—religious leaders are increasingly targeted by non-state actors. Extortion, threats of violence, and targeted assassinations occur when religious figures intervene in recruitment or illicit economic practices. These dynamics have precipitated what some observers describe as a “silent exodus” of clergy and lay leaders from rural districts, with organised crime effectively diminishing religious outreach and community cohesion. These phenomena illustrate the interplay between violent non-state forces and the erosion of organised religious life in contexts where governance is fragmented.
Emerging Human Rights Concerns
Alongside state repression, broader violations affecting religious communities are evident. Indigenous populations that convert to Christianity often face communal punishment or internal displacement, with authorities neglecting to intervene under the pretext of preserving “traditional autonomy.”
This failure to uphold rights protections leaves converts vulnerable to social ostracisation and violence without recourse.
Moreover, digital surveillance has become a tool of repression. Authoritarian states increasingly employ online monitoring and social media tracking to identify and harass young religious activists. These digital mechanisms operate alongside traditional security networks to suppress dissent, restrict mobilization, and deter civic participation by faith communities.
At the same time, a growing intolerance toward religious expression in public spaces has emerged. Secularist movements and state policies have increasingly framed visible religious activity as contrary to “secular state” norms, resulting in the removal of religious symbols from public venues and the imposition of bans on religious processions. These restrictions curtail communal religious practices and diminish the visibility of faith in civic life.
Recommendations for Advocacy
In response to these trends, HRWF recommends International pressure: multilateral bodies should recognise not only violent incidents but also the legal and bureaucratic strangulation of religious groups as high-level human rights violations. This reframing expands the understanding of persecution to include institutional and organisational suppression.
Another priority is the formal protection of religious leaders acting as human rights defenders. In many communities, clergy and lay activists serve as mediators, advocates, and educators; their protection under international frameworks for human rights defenders would offer a crucial safeguard against state and non-state intimidation.
Finally, advocacy efforts should pursue the conditionality of aid and cooperation. Tying international assistance and trade benefits to the restoration of legal status for faith-based NGOs—especially in countries such as Nicaragua—would create leverage for legal reforms and the re-opening of civic space for religious actors.
