Angelina E. Theodorou

Harassment and attacks against religious minorities continue in many countries there, and hostilities against Jews in particular have been spreading.

Of the 64 countries in this category, about half have Christian symbols (48%) and about a third include Islamic religious symbols (33%).

To most Americans, citizenship, like DNA, seems like something a parent passes to a child without thought or effort. And indeed, for fathers around the world, that’s almost universally true. But one-in-seven countries currently have laws or policies prohibiting or limiting the rights of women to pass citizenship to a child or non-citizen spouse.

Hate-speech laws exist in 89 countries around the world (45%). In some countries, the laws protect only certain religious or social groups, while others have broader laws, covering words or actions that insult, denigrate or intimidate a person or group based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity or other traits.

Here’s a region-by-region look at where religious harassment takes place, and to which groups.

As of 2012, at least 17 nations have police that enforce religious norms. Religion police forces are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, and are also found in the Asia-Pacific and in sub-Saharan Africa.