Middle East And North Africa 2024

Crisis, conflict and upheaval beset the Middle East and North Africa region in 2024. Israel’s actions in Gaza took a catastrophic toll on civilians and amounted to genocide. Israel also escalated its armed conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. December’s sudden ousting of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria exposed the consequences of decades of impunity for human rights violations in a region plagued by ongoing repression and a rise in authoritarian practices in multiple countries.

Israel’s relentless military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip intensified the long-standing humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s 18-year unlawful blockade of Gaza. It left most of the Palestinians there displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water.

Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen were drawn into the conflict. For the first time, Iran and Israel openly launched direct attacks on each other’s territories. In September, cross-border hostilities between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah escalated into intense military confrontations. Israel attacked areas across Lebanon, with a devastating effect on civilians.

While millions of people worldwide protested against Israel’s actions in Gaza, throughout 2024 the world’s governments – individually and multilaterally – failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Israel’s system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians.

The effects of other long-standing conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen continued to blight the lives of millions, particularly people from marginalized communities, many of whom were denied their rights to food, water, adequate housing, healthcare and security.

International justice mechanisms took important steps towards accountability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Libya. But Israel’s allies and other powerful actors attacked or dismissed these accountability measures, shielding perpetrators from justice and further laying bare double standards and the failure of the rules-based global order.

Governments and non-state armed actors across the region continued to repress dissent. Authorities detained, tortured and unjustly prosecuted dissidents and critics, punishing them with harsh sentences, including the death penalty. Among those targeted were journalists, online commentators, political and trade union activists, people expressing solidarity with Palestinians, and human rights defenders. In some countries, security forces used unlawful and even lethal force, alongside enforced disappearances and mass arbitrary arrests, to suppress protests. Virtually all perpetrators of these crimes enjoyed impunity.

Discrimination remained rife region-wide on the basis of gender, race, nationality, legal status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion and class.

The major fossil fuel-producing states failed to take steps to address climate change, even as the region continued to suffer the harmful, often life-threatening, consequences of the climate crisis, including extreme weather events and slower onset catastrophes such as increasing water scarcity.

Armed conflicts

Israel’s offensive in Gaza

By the end of 2024, 14 months after deadly attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel’s unremitting military assault on the Gaza Strip had killed at least 45,500 people and injured at least 108,300. Many Palestinians were yet to find their loved ones’ remains in the rubble.

Throughout the year, Amnesty International documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, often destroying entire multigenerational families.

In an attempt to create a buffer zone along Gaza’s eastern perimeter, Israeli forces using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, systematically destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighbourhoods, including homes, schools and mosques.

Israel’s actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, 90% of Gaza’s population, and deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

Amnesty International’s research found that Israel committed acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide. These acts included killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm to civilians and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

Israel repeatedly denied, obstructed and failed to allow and facilitate meaningful humanitarian access into and around Gaza. Israeli forces conducted a large-scale invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May. The government ignored warnings from the international community, including Israel’s own allies, as well as legally binding orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), not to attack Rafah because of the devastating effect it would have on the civilian population.

Israel issued waves of “evacuation” orders, squeezing Gaza’s population into small, densely populated areas that lacked life-sustaining infrastructure, healthcare and food. As a result, most Palestinians in Gaza were facing extreme hunger and rapidly spreading disease. Israeli air strikes frequently hit civilians who were following “evacuation” orders, including after they arrived in areas that Israel promised would be safe.

Israel also continued to arbitrarily detain and, in some cases, forcibly disappear Palestinians from Gaza. They were routinely transferred into Israel and held there incommunicado, without charge or trial, and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.

The presence of Palestinian armed groups in or near civilian areas in Gaza, including camps for internally displaced people, endangered civilian lives and likely violated their obligation under international law to avoid, to the extent feasible, locating fighters in densely populated areas. They continued to hold civilians – Israelis and foreign nationals – hostage, a violation of international humanitarian law that constitutes a war crime.

Israel’s decades-long system of apartheid against Palestinians continued. Attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinian civilians and their property rose sharply. These attacks, which had the backing of the Israeli state, along with extensive land seizure, home demolitions and unlawful use of force, constituted the crimes against humanity of forcible transfer and apartheid.

The international community failed to act meaningfully to end Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. Powerful nations, including the USA and many western European states, publicly backed Israel’s actions, undermining the universal value of international law. For months the UN Security Council took no effective action and only called for a ceasefire in March.

On 26 January the ICJ issued its first provisional measures in the case brought by South Africa against Israel under the Genocide Convention. This was followed by two further orders on 28 March and 24 May. Israel defied the Court’s orders. Nevertheless, some states continued to arm Israel with weapons used to violate international law, despite being warned that this was in violation of their obligation to prevent genocide and risked their complicity in genocide and war crimes.

On 21 November the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defence minister, Yoav Gallant and, in Palestine, Al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Throughout the year, sustained protests and demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza involved millions of people worldwide and were met by severe restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly in many countries.

Other armed conflicts

Israel’s attacks on Gaza led to armed hostilities and attacks in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, some of which included US and UK forces.

After nearly a year of sporadic cross-border attacks, on 23 September Israel launched a new military offensive in Lebanon. An estimated 4,047 people were killed, more than 16,600 injured and 1.2 million displaced in Lebanon between 8 October 2023 and the end of 2024. Israeli forces attacked homes, farmland, schools, churches, mosques and hospitals, including in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. They also razed more than 20 villages, with Israeli soldiers using explosives, bulldozers and excavators to destroy civilian buildings long after gaining control of the areas. The armed group Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets from Lebanon at northern Israel during the year, killing more than 100 people.

Huthi armed forces based in Yemen killed civilian seafarers when they attacked dozens of vessels in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, alleging the vessels were linked to Israel, the USA and UK. In response, US armed forces carried out naval and air strikes, some jointly with UK forces, against Huthi targets. The Huthis carried out missile and drone attacks against Israel on at least 48 occasions, killing one civilian. In retaliation, on 20 July Israel bombed Hodeidah port, critical for delivering humanitarian aid to Yemen, and Ras Kathnib power station, killing at least six civilians. On 29 September, Israel bombed the ports of Hodeidah and Ras Issa, as well as al-Hali and Ras Kathnib power stations, in Hodeidah governorate, reportedly killing five civilians and injuring others.

In April, Iran launched more than 300 munitions at Israel in retaliation for a strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria which killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In October, Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The same month, Israel carried out strikes on 20 targets inside Iran, killing one civilian and four military personnel.

Israel increased its military operations in Syria in the context of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. In December, following the overthrow of President Assad in Syria, Israeli forces moved troops into the UN-defined demilitarized buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights, signalled an expansion of illegal Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights, and carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of armed factions under the Popular Mobilization Units, intensified its operations against Israel in response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, carrying out attacks which the group said targeted military sites and infrastructure in Israel and the Golan Heights.

Elsewhere in the region, long-standing armed conflicts and their aftermath continued to devastate the lives of millions of people, with parties to the conflicts – some backed by foreign governments – committing war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.

In Syria, parties to the long-standing armed conflict and their allies continued to conduct unlawful attacks, killing and injuring scores of civilians and destroying vital infrastructure. In the first half of the year, President Assad’s government, supported by Russia, escalated attacks on north-western Syria under the control of armed opposition groups. Türkiye repeatedly launched military attacks on cities and villages in north-eastern Syria, in its continuing war on Kurdish groups based there, resulting in civilian casualties and damage to vital civilian infrastructure.

On 8 December, opposition forces ousted Syria’s President Assad, ending his family’s five decades of brutal and repressive rule marked by widespread human rights violations amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sporadic armed clashes took place in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, other parts of western Libya and southern Libya between militias and armed groups vying for control of resources or political influence, leading to civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects.

All parties to armed conflicts must respect international humanitarian law, in particular ending direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, and indiscriminate attacks. Foreign governments must stop transfers of weapons where there is an overriding risk of their use to commit or facilitate serious violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.

Repression of dissent

Authorities across the region continued to violate the right of people to express critical or dissenting views, including online, whether about their human rights records, economic policies, or in response to the conflict in Gaza or social issues. Some governments used unfounded terrorism-related charges or charges of spreading “false news” to silence opposition voices and to inflict harsh punishments on their critics.

In Iran, authorities subjected protesters, women defying compulsory veiling laws, journalists, artists, writers, academics, university students, LGBTI individuals, members of ethnic and religious minorities, and human rights defenders to a range of violations, including arbitrary detention, summons for coercive interrogations, and unjust prosecution leading to sentences of death, imprisonment, fines and/or flogging for peacefully exercising their human rights.

Hundreds of people in Jordan were charged under the repressive Cybercrimes Law for criticizing the authorities, expressing solidarity with Palestinians, or calling for peaceful protests and public strikes. The Jordanian authorities routinely violated the fair trial rights of people arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Saudi Arabia continued to arbitrarily detain individuals for their real or alleged views without giving them any opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. In many cases, these individuals were then sentenced to lengthy prison terms or the death penalty on vague, “catch-all” charges that criminalize the expression of peaceful opposition as “terrorism”, in violation of fair trial rights.

Across North Africa, repression of dissent continued or escalated. Tunisian authorities intensified their crackdown on freedom of expression and all forms of dissent, using repressive laws and unfounded charges to arbitrarily detain high-profile members of the political opposition, journalists, social media users, human rights defenders, lawyers and critics. Egypt’s targeting of journalists, peaceful protesters, dissidents, opposition politicians and government critics continued unabated. In Morocco and Western Sahara, Moroccan authorities targeted journalists, activists and government critics, despite a royal pardon for thousands of prisoners. Algeria cracked down on freedom of expression and the press, peaceful assembly and association, including by frequently using fabricated terrorism-related charges to stop peaceful dissent. In Libya, militias and armed groups arbitrarily arrested and detained hundreds of activists, protesters, journalists and online content creators simply for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Governments must respect the rights to freedom of expression and association, including by ensuring that journalists, human rights defenders and activists can enjoy these rights without harassment, violence and prosecution, and releasing those detained for exercising these rights.

Freedom of peaceful assembly

In almost every country in the region, governments used various tactics to prevent or forcibly disperse peaceful protests.

Egyptian authorities carried out mass arrests before planned protests and violently dispersed the few small protests that took place. On 23 April, for instance, they violently broke up a small protest by women human rights defenders and others showing solidarity with women in Palestine and Sudan. Authorities in Iraq frequently used force, including firing live ammunition, to disperse protests driven by widespread frustration over government corruption, economic hardship and poor public services.

Tunisia’s authorities repeatedly used baseless and vague “obstruction” charges to arbitrarily detain, prosecute and convict individuals simply for joining peaceful protests. Jordanian forces arrested thousands of protesters and bystanders linked to huge protests in support of Palestinians in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2024, with many remaining in detention at the end of 2024. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities maintained their repression of peaceful assembly and conducted mass trials of peaceful protesters and other dissidents.

Governments must respect the right to peaceful assembly and end their crack-downs on peaceful protesters.

Economic and social rights

People across the region faced multiple, ongoing crises, including devastating conflicts, severe economic and debt shocks, and the increasing toll of the climate emergency. Rising inflation, government failings and other factors – local, regional and international – put intense pressure on the cost of living, including in some of the poorest and most populous countries in the region. This left millions of people food insecure and struggling to survive, and undermined their rights to health, water and an adequate standard of living.

In Lebanon the long-standing financial and economic crisis, which the government helped to cause and prolong, continued. The government failed dismally to introduce the necessary reforms to protect people’s economic and social rights, including their right to social security. The crisis had a devastating effect on marginalized groups, including, for example, by putting adequate healthcare even further out of reach for many older people, those with disabilities, informal workers, and refugees, and was exacerbated by the destruction caused by Israel in its war with Hezbollah.

Economic crisis also severely affected people’s social and economic rights in Egypt, amid the government’s failure to meet its budgetary obligations for spending on health and education. A new law privatizing healthcare jeopardized access to health services, particularly for those living in poverty. The authorities used threats and arrests to repress workers demanding the minimum wage and residents protesting against forced eviction.

In many countries, governments failed to protect low-paid workers from labour abuses and denied workers the right to join and form independent trade unions and to strike without fear of punishment. In the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, low-paid migrant workers continued to face extreme exploitation, discrimination, grossly inadequate housing, physical and mental abuses, wage theft by their employers, limited access to healthcare, and summary dismissal. Worst affected were domestic workers, most of them women.

Governments must take urgent action to uphold people’s economic and social rights, including by establishing universal social protection systems that enable everyone, including marginalized groups, to access an adequate standard of living, including food, water and healthcare. Donor governments and international financial institutions must urgently work to support governments in achieving this goal. Governments must also protect the right of workers to join and form independent trade unions and to strike, while extending labour law protections to all migrant workers, including domestic workers.

Discrimination

Women and girls

Across the region, women and girls continued to face discrimination in law and practice, including in relation to the rights to freedom of movement, expression, bodily autonomy, inheritance, divorce, political office and employment opportunities. Gender-based violence online and offline remained common and was committed with impunity. In some countries, such violence increased while protections for women became weaker.

Laws in Algeria and Iraq allowed rapists to escape prosecution by marrying their victim.

In Yemen the Huthi de facto authorities and armed groups continued to restrict women’s movement and ban them from travelling without the accompaniment or written approval of a male guardian.

Despite some positive steps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, authorities continued to fail to hold perpetrators of domestic violence to account and imposed arbitrary restrictions on the freedoms of survivors who sought protection in the woefully underfunded shelter system. Lawmakers also attempted to pass amendments to the personal status law that would significantly undermine protections for women and girls.

In Iran, authorities intensified their crackdown on women and girls who defy compulsory veiling, including through digital surveillance such as facial recognition technology. Increased security patrols harassed and attacked women and girls in public spaces.

Militias and armed groups in Libya targeted women influencers and content creators for the way they expressed themselves and their dress. In November the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity announced plans to introduce compulsory veiling for women and enforce it through “morality police”.

LGBTI people

Across the region, people were arrested and prosecuted for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Many were given harsh sentences when convicted of consensual same-sex sexual relations. Attacks on the rights of LGBTI people intensified in Iraq, Libya and Tunisia.

In Libya, the Internal Security Agency militia in the capital, Tripoli, and other militias and armed groups arbitrarily arrested and prosecuted individuals for their actual or perceived sexual orientation and/or gender identity and broadcast their torture-tainted “confessions”. In Tunisia, LGBTI groups reported an increase in prosecutions for “homosexuality charges”.

In April, Iraq criminalized same-sex sexual relations for the first time, punishable with up to 15 years’ imprisonment. The new law also penalizes actions such as “promoting” same-sex relations or transgender expression and adds vague charges such as “acting effeminate”.

Ethnic and religious minorities

Across the region, members of national, ethnic and religious communities and minorities faced embedded discrimination in law and practice, including in relation to their rights to worship and to live free from persecution and other serious human rights abuses.

Israel further entrenched its system of apartheid through oppression and domination over Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. It systematically committed a wide range of human rights violations, including forcible transfers, administrative detention, torture, unlawful killings, denial of basic rights and freedoms, and persecution.

In Iran, ethnic minorities including Ahwazi Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks, Baluchis, Kurds and Turkmen faced discrimination which restricted their access to education, employment, adequate housing and political office. Members of the Baha’i religious minority were subjected to widespread and systematic violations.

Governments must end discrimination based on race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. They must implement legal and policy reforms to grant equal rights for all without discrimination and to protect, promote and guarantee the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief.

Rights of internally displaced people, migrants and refugees

Protracted conflicts left vast numbers of internally displaced people struggling to survive in Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen. Most faced discrimination by authorities, barriers to accessing services, blocks on their right to return home or reprisals if they tried to return without authorization, as well as restrictions on and cuts to vital humanitarian aid.

Approximately 1.1 million Iraqis remained internally displaced, many struggling to access essential needs and services such as housing, water and healthcare. Iraqi security forces subjected some to arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance and torture, including electric shocks and waterboarding, for perceived affiliation to the Islamic State armed group.

In Syria, the number of internally displaced people reached 7.2 million, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Following President Assad’s ousting in December, the humanitarian and security situation remained bleak and uncertain. Nevertheless, many European countries announced they would consider or enact a suspension of pending asylum applications by Syrians.

The rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants were violated across the region, with government failings coupled with the failure of the international community, namely wealthier countries, to share responsibility through providing adequate resettlement places and humanitarian assistance. In Lebanon, around 90% of the country’s estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees were living in extreme poverty and unable to access adequate food, housing, education and healthcare. A disturbing rise in anti-refugee rhetoric, in some cases fuelled by local authorities and politicians, intensified the hostile environment. Meanwhile, many refugees and asylum seekers in neighbouring Jordan, which hosted 2 million Palestinian and approximately 750,000 other refugees, including Syrians, faced poverty and deteriorating conditions.

Tunisia’s routine and collective expulsions of migrants and refugees to Algeria and Libya continued to violate the principle of non-refoulement and left people in deserted or remote border areas without food or water. From May, authorities cracked down on organizations defending refugees’ and migrants’ rights, reducing their access to essential services.

Refugees and migrants in Libya, including those intercepted at sea by armed groups and EU-backed coastguards and forcibly returned to Libya, were subjected to indefinite arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, extortion, forced labour and unlawful expulsions.

Egyptian authorities arbitrarily detained and forcibly returned thousands of Sudanese nationals, despite Sudan’s raging armed conflict, in flagrant violation of international law.

Governments must end the arbitrary detention of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants on the basis of their migration status and protect them from torture and other ill-treatment in detention, refoulement and mass or collective expulsions. Governments must take concrete steps to ensure the voluntary, safe and dignified return of internally displaced people to their areas of origin.

Death penalty

Most states in the region retained the death penalty and imposed death sentences in 2024, including for offences not involving intentional killing, for acts protected under international law such as consensual same-sex sexual relations and apostasy, and for bogus or overly broad charges brought to silence dissent. Several countries executed people. In Iraq, mass executions were carried out without lawyers and relatives being informed in advance. Iran’s execution spree continued as authorities used the death penalty as a tool of political repression.

Governments must immediately establish an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.

Right to a healthy environment

The region continued to suffer the harmful, often life-threatening, consequences of climate change, including extreme weather events, slower onset catastrophes such as increasing and extreme water scarcity, and other environmental mismanagement. Governments failed to take adequate steps to stop climate change, mitigate its impacts or provide adequate support to those most affected.

Iraq suffered severe water shortages and increasing air and water pollution. Ineffective waste management and deforestation intensified dust storms and waterborne diseases, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, particularly displaced persons. Jordan also suffered water shortages, with supply only meeting around two-thirds of demand.

Extreme heat blighted Kuwait, with record temperatures in late May being 4°C to 5°C above past averages. Yet, in March, the CEO of the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation announced that Kuwait would significantly increase oil production by 2035, and announced further increases when new reserves were discovered in July.

Other countries failed to make progress towards necessary fossil fuel phase out. In February, Bahrain sought a loan to expand fossil fuel extraction by creating 400 new oil wells and 30 gas wells. A report in June by Global Witness confirmed that the UAE’s COP28 team had pursued fossil fuel deals for the state-owned oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company while hosting the climate conference in 2023. Also in June, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister announced plans to increase oil production between 2025 and 2027.

Governments must urgently take steps to mitigate the climate crisis, including by curbing carbon emissions and ending the extraction and use of fossil fuels. All states with the necessary resources should significantly increase funding to countries in need of assistance for human rights-consistent mitigation and adaptation measures.

Impunity

Across the region, states continued to facilitate impunity for perpetrators of serious human rights violations, highlighting the failings of deeply flawed domestic judicial systems.

Decades of long-standing impunity for recurrent war crimes and egregious human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians in the context of apartheid and unlawful occupation prevailed.

Moroccan authorities failed to provide victims’ families with truth, justice and reparations after a deadly crackdown by Moroccan and Spanish security forces against sub-Saharan African migrants attempting to cross the border from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Melilla in 2022.

In Iran, impunity prevailed for unlawful killings, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment including rape and other forms of sexual violence, and other crimes under international law or grave human rights violations committed in 2024 and previous years.

In October the ICC announced arrest warrants against six leaders, senior members and affiliates of the al-Kaniat armed group for the war crimes of murder, torture, enforced disappearances and other inhumane acts in Tarhouna, Libya, which the group controlled until June 2020.

European countries continued to investigate and prosecute individuals suspected of committing crimes under international law in Syria through their national courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Governments must combat impunity by undertaking thorough, independent, impartial, effective and transparent investigations into human rights violations and crimes under international law and bringing suspected perpetrators to justice in fair trials in civilian courts.