By providing a comprehensive overview of the judicial status of human rights defenders in Iran, the Human Rights Defenders in Iran: 2025 Report seeks to amplify their voices, protect those at risk, and take a meaningful step, however modest, towards fostering a safer environment for their advocacy.
The human rights defenders featured in this report are individuals who, acting individually or in association with others, work peacefully to promote and protect human rights in accordance with international standards. They are recognised as human rights defenders by virtue of their actions and advocacy, irrespective of their profession, employment status, or formal organisational affiliation.
Observed annually on 10 December, International Human Rights Day serves as the parameter for this report, which documents individuals who faced judicial prosecution or arbitrary detention between 10 December 2024 and 10 December 2025. These defenders span diverse sectors, including anti-death penalty campaigners, defence lawyers, journalists, justice-seeking families, civil activists, teachers, minority rights advocates, workers' rights activists, women's rights defenders, environmental activists and artists.
The initial draft of this report, intended for release at the end of 2025, examined the judicial status of one non-governmental organisation (NGO), 68 human rights defenders, two justice-seeking families and an anti-death penalty campaign along with its members, documenting the systemic rights violations and security pressures they faced from December 2024 to December 2025.
However, since late 2025, Iran has experienced a succession of compounding crises. These include the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi (see page 12) and the subsequent mass arrest of human rights defenders at his memorial service, the nationwide protests of January 2026 alongside their violent state suppression, and subsequent military strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel. This state of conflict has intensified the ongoing crackdown on civil society, generating an unprecedented wave of human rights abuses, heightened security threats, and the widespread persecution of defenders. Consequently, the publication of this report was significantly delayed, requiring repeated updates to the cases under review.
This final edition retains the original scope of 68 human rights defenders, two families seeking justice, one NGO and the anti-death penalty campaign with their cases comprehensively updated until 20 May 2026. Defenders who faced judicial prosecution or harassment after the 10 December 2025 cutoff have been excluded from this iteration and will be documented in the 2026 report.
It is important to note that this report offers only a partial overview of the situation of human rights defenders in Iran. Individuals for whom accurate data was unavailable, or who did not wish to publicise their situations, are omitted. Furthermore, the report does not name the dozens of human rights defenders who have been forced into exile due to state pressure, nor the hundreds or thousands who have been targeted with harassment, threats, or security summonses as a result of their human rights activities.