This Global Religious Freedom Index report presents data on Latin America and the Caribbean collected as part of Round 4 of the Religion and State Project. It is part of a series of regional reports plus a global report to be published between 2024 and 2027. A description of the data collection methods is available in Appendix 1.
Latin America and the Caribbean is often perceived as a region of comparatively high religious freedom given its historically Christian-majority composition and its mostly democratic regimes. The data presented in this report nevertheless show substantial variation across the 27 countries covered, and meaningful upward trends all the four indexes considered, particularly for societal discrimination. The report distinguishes between government restrictions on religion (Sections 2 to 4) and societal discrimination against religious minorities (Sections 5 and 6). For the section on physical violence, we draw on the Violent Incidents Database of the International Institute for Religious Freedom and the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America, an event-based dataset that records and analyses public data on violent incidents related to religious freedom violations.
