Violence and harassment against religious groups by private individuals declined in 2019, a report from the Pew Research Center's twelfth annual survey of global restrictions on religion finds.

Produced as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, the report, Globally, Social Hostilities Related to Religion Decline in 2019, While Government Restrictions Remain at Highest Levels, found that in 2019, forty-three countries had "high" or "very high" levels of social hostilities toward members of various religions (down from fifty-three countries in 2018 and sixty-five countries in 2012). Among the factors behind the decrease in social hostility is a drop in the number of countries experiencing religion-related terrorism (including deaths, physical abuse, displacement, detentions, destruction of property, and fundraising and recruitment by terrorist groups). In 2019, a record low of forty-nine countries experienced at least one of those types of religion-related terrorism, (down from sixty-four countries in 2018 and eighty-two countries in 2014). In addition, the report found a decrease in the number of countries reporting mob violence related to religion (from forty-one in 2018 to thirty-four in 2019), hostilities over proselytizing (from thirty-five to twenty-eight), and individuals using violence or threats to enforce religious norms (from eighty-five to seventy-four).

However, the report found that the decrease in the prevalence of the social hostilities was not matched by a similar decline in government restrictions on religion, including official laws, policies, and actions ranging from bans on conversion to restrictions on religious attire. Indeed, the total number of countries with "high" or "very high" levels of such restrictions in 2019 increased slightly to 29 percent of the countries surveyed, and in total, a hundred and eighty countries had at least one instance of government harassment against religious groups, up from a hundred and seventy-five countries in 2018.