The 10/40 Window is a term coined by Christian missionary strategist and Partners International CEO Luis Bush in 1990 to refer to those regions of the eastern hemisphere, plus the European and African part of the western hemisphere, located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, a general area that was purported to have the highest level of socioeconomic challenges and least access to the Christian message and Christian resources on the planet. The concept behind the 10/40 Window highlights these three elements (as of data available in 1990): an area of the world with great poverty and low quality of life, combined with lack of access to Christian resources and unreached non-Christians. The Window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, as well as almost all of Asia (West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and much of Southeast Asia). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lived in the 10/40 Window, and it is predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, animist, Jewish, or atheist. Many governments in the 10/40 Window are officially or unofficially opposed to Christian missionary work of any kind within their borders. Origin This region of the world was previously known to Christians as the "resistant belt", as noted by Luis Bush at the 1989 Lausanne II Conference in Manila. In 1990, Bush's research led to a meeting with Pete Holzmann, a leader of the team developing the first PC-based GIS software. They analyzed the region using a box between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude and called it the 10/40 box. A few weeks later, Bush and his wife Doris were inspired to rename it the 10/40 Window, stating that this region ought to be seen as a "window of opportunity". The analysis and concept was a generalization that focuses on a region, not a sharp boundary defining what is a priority, and what is not. For this reason, many missiologists prefer to use the phrase 10/40 Window region. Before being called the "resistant belt", the Islamic portions of this region, as well as selected unreached Buddhist and Hindu areas, were referred to as the "unoccupied fields" by Samuel Zwemer, in his book by that same title, published in 1911. Controversy Some researchers have objected to such a broad-brush term which seems to imply a unifying characteristic of the 10/40 Window when in fact no large area of the planet is completely homogenous