Which countries did Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch name as most concerning in their 2024 or 2025 reports?

1. What the Amnesty reports say at a glance — broad coverage, specific flashpoints

Amnesty International’s flagship annual reviews cover hundreds of countries and are structured to show global trends and regional problems; the April 2024 edition documented issues across 155 countries during 2023, while the April 2025 edition covered 150 countries and focused on violations in 2024 ^{[1] [2]}. Amnesty singled out the human cost of major armed conflicts — explicitly flagging wars in Gaza and Ukraine — and warned of a “near breakdown” of international law as powerful states and armed groups flout rules designed to protect civilians ^{[5] [1]}.

2. Amnesty’s named countries and crises — where reporting was concentrated

Amnesty’s public materials and press coverage repeatedly focus on Israel/Palestine (including its later, separate conclusion on alleged genocide in Gaza), Ukraine and other conflict zones; the organization also highlighted regional backlashes on women’s and minority rights and misuse of technology in places such as Ethiopia ^{[6] [1] [7]}. Available sources do not provide a compact list of “most concerning countries” in the single-line form you asked for; instead Amnesty presents country-by-country chapters within its larger reports and draws attention to those conflict-affected and repression-prone states ^{[1] [2]}.

3. What Human Rights Watch emphasized in World Report 2025 — conflicts and democratic backsliding

Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2025 catalogued abuses across more than 100 countries, prioritizing the catastrophic human tolls of Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine and warning about democratic erosion in places such as Russia, India and Venezuela ^{[3] [4]}. The report also flagged consequences of electoral shifts — including concerns around the U.S. after Donald Trump’s reelection — and documented abuses ranging from restrictions on women’s rights to repression of dissent ^{[3] [8]}.

4. Countries HRW repeatedly names as acute concerns

HRW’s coverage singles out Gaza (and actions by Israeli authorities it described as war crimes in specific 2025 reporting), Sudan and Ukraine as major humanitarian and legal crises, while also documenting sustained repression in Russia, India and Venezuela; HRW’s country chapters and thematic reporting make these recurring focal points in the World Report framework ^{[3] [9] [4]}.

5. How both organisations frame “most concerning” — trends over rankings

Neither Amnesty nor HRW publish a single ranked “most concerning” country list in the materials cited here; instead both place emphasis on patterns — large-scale armed conflict (Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan), democratic backsliding (Russia, India, Venezuela, concerns about the U.S.), and systemic abuses such as mass executions or denial of civic space — and they highlight multiple countries as emblematic of those trends ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}.

6. Notable, specific Amnesty outputs referenced separately

Amnesty published focused investigations that named particular states for specific allegations: for example, a December 2024 Amnesty report concluded Israel had committed and continued to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza based on detailed research of strikes and government statements ^[6]. This is an example where Amnesty moved from annual-survey language to a targeted, high-profile allegation ^[6].

7. Caveats, competing perspectives and limits of available reporting

Available sources here document which conflicts and countries the two organisations emphasized, but they do not supply a single consolidated shortlist of “most concerning” countries that would answer your query as a ranked list; Amnesty and HRW structure their findings as country chapters and thematic analyses rather than competitive league tables ^{[1] [3]}. Where Amnesty or HRW publish explicit country accusations (e.g., Amnesty’s Gaza findings), those are presented as the organisations’ conclusions; other governments and actors may dispute those characterizations, and such counterclaims are not detailed in the sources provided ^[6].

8. How to get a concise list if you need one

To produce a defensible, concise list of “most concerning” countries from these reports, I can extract the country-chapter headings or the specific country case studies from Amnesty’s 2024/2025 reports and HRW’s World Report 2025 and compile them into a ranked or unranked shortlist — but that requires directly parsing the full country chapters in the cited reports ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Tell me whether you prefer a short unranked list (e.g., Gaza/Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, Russia, India, Venezuela, United States) based strictly on frequency and emphasis in the cited materials, and I will extract and cite the exact country chapters.