What is Happening in Iran Today?
As of 2025, the human rights situation in Iran is in a state of severe crisis.
Latest updates:
30th October 2025
- The UN International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran has ‘sounded the alarm over the serious deterioration of the human rights situation in Iran’ (Centre for Human Rights in Iran, 2025). This includes:
- A surge in unlawful killings.
- Repression of freedom of expression – high numbers of arbitrary arrests of journalists, human rights defenders and minorities.
- Repression of women and ethnic groups.
- Transnational repression
Read the Mission’s full statement here
Women’s Rights in Iran
The authorities in Iran continue to treat women as second-class citizens (Amnesty International, 2023). For example, the legal age of marriage for girls is 13 years old, and fathers can obtain permission for marriage at an even younger age.
An ongoing series of protests and civil unrest began in September 2022 in response to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police for allegedly violating Iran’s strict rules requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab. Certain reports state that officers beat her head with a baton, though Iranian police claim she suffered a heart attack (BBC, 2022).
The UN’s International Fact-Finding Mission to the Islamic Republic of Iran has reported that the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 was both unlawful and the responsibility of the Iranian state. Sarah Hossain, the mission’s chair, stated that “over multiple months” following Amini’s death and resulting protests, security forces shot at protestors “at very short distances in a targeted fashion” – with over 550 individuals killed over “multiple months” in 26/30 Iranian provinces.
Amini, 22, died within the custody of Iranian “morality police” following non-observance of Iran’s mandatory hijab law. The UN mission was established in November 2022 in order to “thoroughly and independently investigate alleged human rights violations” in the aftermath of the event. Hossain claimed that the Iranian state had allegedly since begun using artificial intelligence (AI) via mobile phone apps “to monitor and enforce compliance by women and girls with mandatory hijab rules.”
Women and girls were at the forefront of a popular uprising against this barbaric detainment, challenging decades of gender-based discrimination and violence (Amnesty International, 2023).
The UN’s Special Rapporteur to Iran, Javaid Rehman, also noted that 834 people, including children, were executed in 2023 – a 43% rise from the year prior. While many of these executions were attributed to drug use, the fact-finding mission also found that at least 9 “young men” had been “arbitrarily executed” between Dec. 2022 and Jan. 2024.
HRPF has provided over 60 grants to Iranian prisoners of conscience since 2022 (as of October 2025). The need for aid in Iran is likely to worsen with tough crackdown on protestors and dissidents.
UPDATES – October 2025
Unfortunately, we have not seen any improvements for the situation in Iran. Scores of human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience, many of them women, remain behind bars while authorities continue to harass, arrest, and prosecute dissenters (HRW, 2025).
Serious human rights violations, including the persecution of women and girls, persist. In December 2024, the ‘Protection of the Family through Promoting the Culture of Hijab and Chastity’ law was published, it’s goal to impost large fines on women who wear ‘improper hijab’ or who refuse to wear the hijab in public and potential prison terms of repeat offenders (OpinioJuris, 2025). Though the implementation of this law has been paused, it’s creation is a further assault on women’s vital rights and freedoms.
The UN Fact-Finding Mission noted a deeply concerning rise in cases of femicide reported in recent months, with over 60 cases between March and September 2025. Reports also indicate that the ‘morality police’ have recently returned to patrol the streets of Iran.
Sources:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147681
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/ffm-iran/index https://opiniojuris.org/2025/06/03/current-human-rights-concerns-in-iran-womens-rights-and-arbitrary-executions/
https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/11/human-rights-council-establishes-fact-finding-mission-investigate-alleged-human-rights https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/iran-un-fact-finding-mission-alarmed-surge-repression-and-extraordinary
The Voices of Iran
Sahar
Read here the story of Sahar, a Iranian singer, poet and translator, who was forced to flee Iran after speaking out against the repression of women.
Here is Middle East
An excerpt from Sahar’s poem ‘I am from the Middle East’
The weather is cloudy here every day
& grief is our brother &
The pain has been our wall to wall neighbour for years
Elham and Neda
See Elham and Neda*s story – two sisters who faced brutal persecution for upholding human rights in Iran.
Life for women and LGBTQ+
Neda*, an activist and member of the LGBTQ+ community in Iran
people in the Islamic Republic of
Iran is difficult and dangerous.
I have faced threats and violence
for being myself
