Overview

Armed conflicts, increasing use of authoritarian practices, economic, social and climate crises and Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Occupied Gaza Strip were devastating for millions of people across the region in 2025, particularly marginalized communities.

Israel committed multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, against Palestinians in Gaza. The genocide continued beyond the 9 October ceasefire. Israel destroyed or severely damaged virtually all of Gaza’s housing, historical buildings and civilian infrastructure, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza. This included the continuation and tightening of its 18-year-long unlawful blockade, used to systematically deny Palestinians access to humanitarian aid and other essential supplies and services and engineer a humanitarian catastrophe. The vast majority of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza were unlawfully displaced, starved and deprived of adequate healthcare and shelter.

Israel also launched military attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, and Yemen, some of which killed or injured civilians. In southern Lebanon, Israel extensively destroyed civilian property. Israel’s system of apartheid against all Palestinians took a heavy toll, particularly in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, through high-intensity military operations and a sharp increase in state-backed settler violence.

Mass protests against Israel’s genocide spread around the world. A wide range of organizations, international bodies and states acknowledged that Israel was committing genocide. Nevertheless, the world’s governments failed to take meaningful action to stop the genocide or to bring an end to Israel’s unlawful occupation.

Across the region, governments and non-state armed groups repressed dissent, with governments increasingly utilizing authoritarian practices. Authorities detained, tortured and unjustly prosecuted critics and opponents, punishing them with harsh sentences, including capital punishment. Among those frequently targeted were journalists, dissidents, human rights defenders, women’s rights activists and trade unionists.

In Syria, the fall of the Assad government in late 2024 created an opening for civic space and transitional justice processes. Significant challenges remained, including ensuring justice for sectarian-based killings and creating an enabling environment that allows civil society to flourish.

Discrimination continued to blight the lives of millions of people across the region on the basis of gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and class. Several countries ramped up human rights abuses against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.

Despite increasingly catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis, the region’s major fossil fuel-producing states maintained or increased production levels.

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