Middle East And North Africa 2025

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.

Genocide

Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continued throughout 2025 with the continued denial of access to adequate humanitarian assistance amid the ongoing forced displacement of nearly the entire population, devastating military bombardment and extensive destruction of civilian property and infrastructure.

In March, Israel unilaterally ended a truce agreed on 19 January and immediately escalated intensive military attacks on Gaza. A ceasefire agreed in October triggered the release of all 20 living hostages held by Palestinian armed groups and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel. However, Israel’s military attacks continued, killing a further 415 Palestinians between the ceasefire and the end of the year.

During 2025, Israel killed 26,791 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 64,065, of whom 60% were children, women and older people. Israel’s continued to attack overcrowded civilian places, including cafes, busy markets, and schools sheltering those forcibly displaced due to its military operations.

A particularly deadly day was 18 March, when a series of Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 414 Palestinians, including 174 children. On 23 March, Israeli forces attacked marked humanitarian vehicles, including five ambulances, killing 15 aid workers, including Red Crescent paramedics. On 30 June, in an indiscriminate attack, the Israeli military struck the popular al-Baqa cafe, killing 32 people, mostly civilians.

Mass displacement caused by Israeli orders or destruction of whole neighbourhoods caused great physical and mental harm. In May, without imperative military necessity, Israel wantonly destroyed the southern town of Khuza’a, home to 11,000 Palestinians. On 5 September, Israel launched a campaign to demolish high-rise residential and commercial buildings across Gaza City, flattening at least 16 tower blocks in 10 days, and destroying makeshift camps in their vicinity, resulting in the further displacement of thousands of families.

Israel’s genocide encompassed the deliberate orchestration of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. By mid-August, more than half a million Palestinians in Gaza faced famine, the highest level of catastrophic starvation; a further 1.4 million were at the second or third critical levels. OCHA reported that, in July alone, there were almost 13,000 new hospital admissions for children with acute malnutrition. For the third consecutive year, Israel prohibited all medical evacuations from Gaza into the West Bank and Israel, despite court petitions, and severely restricted medical evacuations abroad, causing preventable deaths.

Between 2 March and 19 May, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza. The temporary relaxation after 19 May still did not allow in some critical supplies, including fuel and cooking gas. On 9 March, Israeli authorities cut the electricity supply to the last desalination plant in Gaza. Without fuel, electricity generators could not power hospital equipment. Additionally, between late May and August, at least 859 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and its security contractors while desperately seeking aid from the militarized aid-distribution scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Israel caused extensive destruction to Palestinian cultural, religious, medical and educational facilities. The Israeli army destroyed all Gaza’s universities and colleges, hundreds of mosques and three churches. Most schools were turned into shelters for displaced people, and subsequently came under attack from Israeli air strikes and unmanned demolition “robots”. Israeli forces destroyed women’s healthcare and reproductive health facilities, and blocked aid for reproductive healthcare.

At the end of 2025, Israeli forces continued to be fully deployed in more than 58% of the Gaza Strip. Amnesty International warned that it was a “dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal” after the October ceasefire, and that “the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over”.

Israel must end its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including by respecting its legal obligations to allow unimpeded access to aid, fully lifting its illegal blockade and removing its illegal military presence as indicated by the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinions.

Apartheid

Israel continued to impose an apartheid system of oppression and domination against all Palestinians whose rights it controlled. Israel’s laws, policies and practices left Palestinians fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity. In 2025, OCHA counted 849 roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, obstructing Palestinians’ movement between Palestinian villages and towns, and delaying access for emergency services.

Israeli authorities continued to demolish buildings, permanently displacing Palestinians, with OCHA recording the highest annual figures for both demolitions and displacement since 2009. Eighty-six new illegal outposts were established and 54 new illegal settlements approved, in addition to some 371 already in existence, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli anti-occupation organization.

Israel’s military and government officials increasingly allowed or encouraged settlers to attack and terrorize Palestinians with impunity, with soldiers sometimes joining the gratuitous violence and protecting settlers. Such attacks expelled some 220 families from 19 villages in the West Bank, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Jinba and Shi’b al-Butum in the South Hebron Hills were repeatedly targeted. OCHA recorded more than 1,600 violent settler attacks in the first 10 months of 2025.

Throughout the year, the Israeli military conducted high-intensity attacks, including aerial strikes, in the north of the West Bank, resulting in killings, extensive destruction of homes and infrastructure and the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians, particularly those already living in refugee camps. In late November, footage showed Israeli soldiers in Jenin summarily executing two Palestinian men who could be seen surrendering.

Prominent members of the Israeli government continued to praise and glorify violence against Palestinians, including arbitrary arrests and torture and other ill-treatment of those in Israeli detention, including rape and sexual violence, and denial of basic rights including food and healthcare. At least 98 Palestinians died in Israeli custody between October 2023 and November 2025, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.

In Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab in southern Israel, Israeli authorities demolished some 5,000 homes in order to expand Jewish communities. Israeli police demolished more than 60 homes and structures in the Bedouin Palestinian village of Al-Sir evicting some 1,500 residents. In November, the Supreme Court approved the eviction of more than 500 residents of the unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin village of Ras Jrabah.

Amnesty International is calling on states, the international community and companies to step up their pressure on Israel to abide by its international obligations to dismantle its system of apartheid against all Palestinians whose rights it controls and put an end to its unlawful occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Violations of international humanitarian law

In addition to its military operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel launched attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and Yemen, some of which killed or injured civilians.

On 13 June, Israel began a 12-day offensive against Iran, damaging civilian infrastructure and killing more than 1,100 people, including 45 children. On 23 June, Israeli forces targeted Evin prison in the capital, Tehran, killing at least 80 civilians and causing extensive damage to the prison complex. The attack constituted a serious violation of international humanitarian law requiring investigation as a war crime. Iran launched retaliatory missiles and drones at Israel, unlawfully using cluster munitions and killing at least 29 people, including children.

On 9 September, Israeli air strikes on a residential complex in Qatar’s capital, Doha, where ceasefire negotiations were taking place, killed six people.

Despite a ceasefire agreed in November 2024 between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah, Israel continued to regularly carry out military attacks and cause extensive destruction in Lebanon. Between November 2024 and September 2025, OHCHR, the UN human rights office, confirmed 103 civilians killed in Lebanon since the ceasefire.

Amnesty International research showed how the Israeli military extensively destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 civilian structures as well as agricultural land in southern Lebanon between October 2024 and January 2025, both before and after the ceasefire took effect.

On 18 March, the Huthi armed group in Yemen resumed its missile and drone attacks on Israel. Between May and September, Israel carried out strikes on major infrastructure in northern Yemen, reportedly killing and injuring hundreds of civilians.

In Yemen, ongoing conflicts continued to exacerbate devastating economic and humanitarian crises. Amnesty International documented a US air strike, which should be investigated as a war crime, on a migrant detention centre in Sa’ada, north-western Yemen, that killed and injured dozens of African migrants being detained by the Huthi de facto authorities.

Serious bouts of fighting flared up sporadically in Syria during 2025. On 6 March, armed groups affiliated with the former government attacked security and military sites in the predominantly Alawite coastal governorates. In response, the government, backed by militias, launched a counter-offensive, leading to massacres in which around 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed, including sectarian-based killings of members of the Alawite community by pro-government forces.

In July, clashes between Druze and Bedouin fighters erupted in the south of Syria. After the government intervened in Suwayda governorate, Amnesty International documented government and affiliated forces extrajudicially executing 46 Druze men and women over a two-day period in July. Israel also carried out strikes in Suwayda during the same period and Amnesty International received credible reports of violations committed by other groups involved in the fighting. This included the abduction of a humanitarian worker by Druze armed groups. In Libya, armed clashes erupted in Tripoli on 12 May between rival militias in populated residential areas and involved the use of large-calibre weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, in an improper and imprecise way. A Tripoli-based NGO reported that 53 civilians had died in the clashes.

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

Freedom of expression, association and assembly

Several states in the region increasingly resorted to authoritarian practices during 2025, clamping down on a wide range of human rights and extending their crackdown on dissent, including online.

In Tunisia, authorities deepened their suppression of dissent, including by targeting human rights organizations and defenders and NGO staff. Government opponents were handed punitive sentences after politically motivated mass trials under counterterrorism or cybercrime laws. In November, a Tunis appeal court confirmed sentences of up to 45 years’ imprisonment against opposition politicians across the political spectrum, human rights defenders and activists in the notorious “Conspiracy Case”, after a flawed trial. Decree Law 54 was used to silence dissenting journalists, social media users, lawyers, artists and activists. In Egypt, the authorities continued to stifle independent civil society associations and the media and punish criticism of the government. Security forces arbitrarily detained journalists, researchers and dissidents, and subjected them to enforced disappearance, incommunicado detention, and torture and other ill-treatment.

Widespread and severe repression of dissent continued in Gulf states. Saudi Arabia severely restricted the rights to freedom of expression and association, with government critics and human rights defenders facing long prison terms, grossly unfair trials, arbitrary travel bans and increased use of capital punishment. Neighbouring Oman introduced a new citizenship law enabling authorities to revoke citizenship of people who “offend” Oman or the Sultan, or belong to a group, party or organization that embraces principles that “harm the interests” of Oman. Press freedom was also further restricted.

In Iraq, authorities used vague legal provisions criminalizing “indecent content” and “public morality” violations to target critics, activists and independent media. In May, the Jordanian Media Commission blocked 12 local and foreign media websites for “spreading media poison and attacking Jordan and its national symbols”. According to the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms, 12 journalists were detained by the Palestinian police for periods ranging from a few hours to two weeks during which they were interrogated about their work.

Across the region, authorities suppressed peaceful protests by banning or forcibly dispersing them.

In Algeria, police arbitrarily arrested peaceful protesters in January and February during strikes and demonstrations for workers’ rights. During protests that began on 28 December in Tehran and quickly spread nationwide, security forces unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, tear gas and beatings to disperse largely peaceful protesters calling for the fall of the Islamic Republic system, leading to killings and horrific injuries. In Palestine, Hamas-run security services arbitrarily detained and tortured protesters who organized peaceful demonstrations in Beit Lahia in March and April.

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

Unfair trials

Unfair trials and other human rights violations marred criminal justice systems across the region. In Egypt and Libya, despite some long-overdue releases, thousands of people remained arbitrarily detained without legal basis or following unfair trials amid ongoing enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, and incommunicado detention. In Iran, the judiciary lacked independence and was complicit in enforced disappearances and torture.

In Tunisia, the judiciary lacked independence and courts issued heavy sentences after unfair mass trials. In February, the Tunis Court of First Instance ruled that upcoming “terrorism” trials would proceed with defendants attending remotely from prison. Lawyers representing members of political opposition groups and victims of violations were targeted with criminal investigations under bogus charges such as “spreading false information”.

In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, prominent journalist Sherwan Sherwani received a new prison sentence of four-and-a-half years on spurious charges in August, days before his scheduled release. His reconviction was part of a documented pattern of the judiciary extending the detention of journalists, activists and critics through successive charges.

Authorities in Egypt continued to refer journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and others held in prolonged pretrial detention to trials before special terrorism circuits of criminal courts in connection with terrorism-related charges, many of which were solely based on the exercise of human rights. Such courts systematically flouted fair trial standards.

In Jordan, thousands of individuals remained in administrative detention after local governors deemed them “a danger to the people”. They were held without charge or access to a judicial body to challenge the legality of their detention.

Judicial authorities in Algeria repeatedly violated the right to a fair trial including by unnecessarily placing individuals in pretrial detention, bringing defendants to court without informing their lawyers, and subjecting defendants to expedited court hearings.

Trials in Iran were systematically unfair, rendering detentions and executions arbitrary. The new Espionage Law further eroded fair trial rights.

Authorities must guarantee fair trial rights, respect the independence of the judiciary and refrain from abusing the justice system to persecute dissent.

Death penalty

Most states in the region imposed death sentences in 2025.

Iran carried out its highest number of executions for decades. The escalation was driven by increased use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression, and lethal anti-narcotics policies. Mass executions sparked peaceful prison sit-ins and hunger strikes. “Adultery” remained punishable by stoning to death. Ethnic minorities continued to be disproportionately subjected to the death penalty.

Saudi Arabia executed hundreds of people for a wide range of crimes, including drug- and “terrorism”-related offences. Most of those executed for drug-related offences were foreign nationals, who faced additional hurdles to receiving a fair trial. Shia people comprised a very significant proportion of those executed for “terrorism”. Many executions were for ta’zir (discretionary) offences, where no specific penalty is mandated in law. In a startling development, Saudi Arabia executed at least two young men for crimes committed when they were children.

Executions were also carried out in Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Algeria and Kuwait broadened their scope of capital punishment to cover drug-related offences.

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

Economic and social rights

Severe economic and social crises affected people across a region impacted by conflicts, financial stresses and climate change and without a universal social protection system. The communities hit the hardest were already under-served, living under conditions that undermined their economic and social rights including health, water, housing and an adequate standard of living. Those protesting for their socio-economic rights frequently faced repression.

The millions of people living in poverty in Egypt faced new hardships. In August, Egyptian authorities legislated to end long-standing rental contracts and decreed other measures that threatened the affordability of homes for low-income people. Garment workers who went on strike in January were arrested and subsequently sacked.

The governments of several countries, including the Gulf states, failed to protect low-paid migrant workers from extreme labour exploitation and other abuses, and denied them the right to form independent trades unions.

The US government’s abrupt and irresponsible termination of foreign assistance early in the year put at risk the health and human rights of millions of people in the region who depended on humanitarian aid. In Yemen, aid workers described to Amnesty International how the USA’s decision to cut aid funding led to the shutdown of life-saving assistance and protection services, including malnutrition treatment to children, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, safe shelters for survivors of gender-based violence, and healthcare to children suffering from cholera and other illnesses.

Governments must 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 housing, as well as essential services such as healthcare and education. Governments must also respect the rights of workers to join and form independent trades unions and to strike, and should extend labour law protections to all migrant workers.

Right to a healthy environment

The region continued to suffer the harmful, often life-threatening consequences of climate change, including extreme weather events and water scarcity, and environmental mismanagement. Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Syria were among the countries facing severe water crises, undermining the rights to water, health and an adequate standard of living, and disproportionately affecting rural communities, refugees and low-income households.

Authorities in Iran failed to address the country’s environmental degradation, which disproportionately affected marginalized communities. The crisis was marked by the loss of ecosystems; groundwater depletion; water pollution; deforestation; land subsidence; declining water reserves and soil health; and air pollution, which contributed to thousands of deaths.

Meanwhile, governments in the region’s oil- and gas-rich states failed to take adequate steps to stop climate change, mitigate its impacts or provide adequate support to those most affected. Bahrain expanded its oil and gas production; Kuwait remained among the world’s highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases; Qatar was still one of the world’s leading exporters of liquefied natural gas; and Saudi Arabia remained in the world’s top 10 carbon emitters per capita.

Israel’s destruction in Gaza released toxic materials into water systems causing permanent pollution.

Governments must urgently take steps to mitigate the climate crisis, including by curbing carbon emissions and ending the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

Rights of internally displaced people, refugees and migrants

The devastating political, humanitarian and economic crises in 2025 increased the number of people leaving their homes in search of safety, with many facing human rights violations in the process. Millions were or became internally displaced in Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. In several countries, state and/or non-state actors routinely violated the rights of displaced people. Security forces, militias, and armed groups and other non-state actors across Libya continued to commit widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses against refugees and migrants with impunity. During the year, EU-backed coastguards in western Libya, and the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF)-affiliated Libyan Special Naval Forces and Tarik Ben Zeyad armed groups in eastern Libya, intercepted more than 25,000 people and forcibly returned them to Libya – an increase from the previous year.

The more than 1 million internally displaced people in Iraq continued to endure worsening conditions amid prolonged displacement, with many struggling to access vital services including healthcare, water and housing. Living conditions also deteriorated in camps for displaced people in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

More than 1.8 million Afghans, including unaccompanied and separated children, were unlawfully expelled or forced to return to Afghanistan. The mass expulsion campaign involved violent home raids, stop-and-searches and arbitrary arrests. Afghans who remained in Iran faced widespread violence and discrimination.

In Tunisia, migration and asylum policies were characterized by widespread human rights violations, predominantly affecting Black refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. Public comments by parliamentary and governmental figures exacerbated racist violence against Black migrants. Officials routinely carried out life-threatening collective and unlawful expulsions to Libya and Algeria, often after reckless sea interceptions or racially targeted arrests and frequently accompanied by torture and other ill-treatment, including dehumanizing sexual violence. The government’s continued suspension of access to asylum aggravated violations against asylum seekers and refugees.

From April onwards, Algerian security forces increased mass arrests and collective expulsions of Black and racialized migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Hundreds of refugees and migrants were arbitrarily arrested in Libya upon their forcible and collective expulsions by Tunisian and Algerian authorities. They and thousands of other refugees and migrants in Libya were detained indefinitely in cruel and inhuman conditions and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.

Authorities must end unlawful detentions and deportations of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, respect the principles of non-refoulement and non-discrimination and facilitate the voluntary and safe return of the internally displaced to their homes.

Discrimination

Women and girls

Women and girls continued to face discrimination in law and practice, including in relation to the rights to freedom of movement, expression, bodily autonomy, and in inheritance, divorce, political office and employment opportunities. Entrenched gender-based violence, including femicide, remained common, with authorities systematically failing to address impunity for these crimes.

Iraq’s parliament granted a religious sect increased authority over family law, including marriage and divorce, deepening sectarian divisions and heightening risks to women’s rights. It also failed to criminalize domestic violence or repeal problematic and discriminatory articles of the Penal Code, such as those mitigating so-called “honour-based killings” and corporal punishment. Domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence remained pervasive.

Authorities in Iran continued to treat women and girls as second-class citizens, denying equal rights in marriage, divorce, child nationality and custody, employment, inheritance and political office. The legal marriage age for girls remained 13. Widespread resistance to compulsory veiling forced authorities to end the violent mass public arrests seen in previous years and pause implementation of a new veiling law. Nevertheless, authorities continued to use existing laws and regulations to enforce compulsory veiling in workplaces, universities and other public sector institutions, leaving women and girls who resisted at constant risk of harassment, assault, arbitrary arrest, fines and expulsion from employment and education.

LGBTI people

People in many states across the region continued to be arrested and prosecuted for their sexual orientation or gender identity, and some received harsh sentences for consensual same-sex sexual relations.

Yemen’s criminal code criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations and anal sex, with penalties including imprisonment and death by stoning. In Algeria and Morocco, authorities continued to prosecute adults for consensual same-sex sexual relations; in Tunisia, such prosecutions increased.

Ethnic and religious minorities

Across the region, members of national, ethnic and religious communities and minorities faced entrenched 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.

In Iran, ethnic minorities continued to face discrimination in access to education, employment, adequate housing and political office, as well as other human rights violations. Iran’s religious minorities faced arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution and torture and other ill-treatment for professing or practising their faith.

In Libya, between August and October the Subul al-Salam Battalion, an armed group under LAAF command, and the LAAF-affiliated police committed unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances against members of the Tebu community in Kufra district, based on their ethnic origin.

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.