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Almost 7,000 people belonging to the largely Christian minority group in Kachin, northern Myanmar, have fled their houses since fighting between the army and a rebel group flared up in early April, according to recent figures from the Red Cross.

‘It’s a war where civilians are being systematically targeted by members of Burma Army … [yet] the international community chooses to overlook it,’ political analyst and writer Stella Naw told the Guardian newspaper, with international attention on Myanmar focused on the humanitarian crisis facing the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

Seventy-four children had to leave their Christian-run hostel in Rajasthan in early May, after the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the child welfare committee’s seizure of the central office of Emmanuel Mission India.

Emmanuel Mission International (EMI), founded in 1960 by Archbishop M.A. Thomas, is well-known for providing quality education to students from under-resourced backgrounds, regardless of caste or religion. EMI now runs five societies. One, Emmanuel Education Society, runs over 40 schools in Rajasthan state.

On 7 March, police in Nigeria’s north east Adamawa State arrested the organiser of a protest march against the continued killings of predominantly Christian farmers by mainly Muslim Fulani herdsmen.

Mijah Stanley had called on ‘all pro-democracy and civil rights organisations, faith-based and community-based organisations, as well as other Nigerians’ to rally. However, the march never went ahead after police spokesperson S.P. Othman Abubakar warned they would be arrested and prosecuted.

There is a sense of emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR) where security has dramatically deteriorated across the country: President Faustin-Archange Touadéra failed to establish his authority beyond the capital, Bangui, 18 months after his election.

Gunmen are at crossroads in broad daylight, in a neighbourhood near the international airport. At night, gunshots can still be heard in the capital. In the capital, businesses and schools are working fairly well. In one of the epicentres of the violence, PK5, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood, markets and shops have re-opened (CAR is 76% nominally Christian, 14% nominally Muslim).

Hannah Cho* tells her story of faith in God despite horrendous persecution.

After the Korean war, public religion was discouraged. The local church was turned into a school and Hannah remembers that her Christian mother prayed at home while the family kept watch for informants.

Local churches in Dunkirk helped to evacuate terrified migrants on 10 April as a devastating fire spread through their camp in northern France.

La Linière camp in Grande-Synthe, just outside Dunkirk, housed an estimated 1,500 migrants, including a handful of Christian converts, but was reduced to ‘a heap of ashes’, a local official said. Afghan migrants reportedly began to set fire to the chipboard cabins in which the migrants lived and the fires quickly spread. Riot police intervened.

It’s been over five months since a pioneering US missionary was kidnapped in Niger.

Jeff Woodke, who worked for Jeunesse en Mission Entraide et Developpement, a branch of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was abducted by unknown assailants in October, from the town of Abalak in northern Niger.

Christians in the south of Nigeria are failing to help their persecuted compatriots in the north, according to a veteran humanitarian campaigner, it was reported in late December.

Baroness Caroline Cox, who has made numerous aid missions to the country said: ‘My personal view is that many of those churches are immensely wealthy and I would hope they could do more to help those who are suffering in the north, particularly the internally displaced people who are left. They could work with churches [in the north] who know the needs to reach those most in need. From a Christian point of view, St Paul said that where one part of the Body of Christ suffers, we all suffer. There is an obligation to help our Christian brothers and sisters.’

The kidnap of a pioneering American missionary on 14 October is a ‘terrible tragedy’ for the communities he served for 24 years, according to the local mayor, and it has raised security concerns among the country’s missionary community.

Jeff Woodke, 55, who worked for a branch of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was abducted by unknown assailants from the town of Abalak in northern Niger. They killed two guards and he was taken to eastern Mali where Mujao – a radical Islamic group – have a stronghold.

Eight young people were shot and three killed when an unidentified gunman opened fire outside a Christian radio station in Mali on 17 December.

The motive for the attack on the Tahanint radio station in Timbuktu is unknown, but witnesses described the gunman as a turbaned Tuareg. Tahanint, which means ‘mercy’ in the local dialect, had just finished broadcasting for the day when the eight were shot outside the building. The radio station is closely linked with a local Baptist church and evangelical mission.

Hundreds of extremist Islamists attacked a Christian school in Bangladesh on 5 November in response to locals who were outraged by rumours stating that the school, which welcomes children of all faiths, was forcing Muslim children to convert to Christianity.

The mob comprised about 200 people. The students were not physically injured, but 12 of its 14 members of staff were beaten. A female teacher endured a serious head injury. Another teacher said that he managed to run away from six Madrasa students, armed with knives and machetes, after being forced out of his classroom.

In what looks like a bid to extend its influence in the South Asian region, so-called Islamic State (IS) militants have allegedly distributed 12-page pamphlets in the north-west of Pakistan, in Peshawar and in Afghan refugee camps based near its outskirts, it was reported in early September.

They were written in Pashto and Dari, and titled Fatah (Victory) The editor’s name, however, appears fake and their place of publication obscure. For a long time, Afghan resistance groups, including the Haqqani Network, Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan and the Tora Bora group have published similar pamphlets, magazines and propaganda literature in Peshawar’s black markets. However this latest spread has raised fears of a possible link between IS and such militants, threatening all non-Muslims.

Consensus is emerging to begin ‘contingency planning’ to send a UN peacekeeping force to the lawless Central African Republic (CAR), the UN’s No.2 official said in mid-November.

‘The country in the heart of Africa is descending into complete chaos before our eyes and requires a capable security force on the ground’, UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson told the UN Security Council. The occupation: ‘must be robust and prevent what has the high potential to result in widespread atrocities’.