Which countries had the highest number of documented human rights abuses in 2024 and 2025?
Executive summary
Available, public assessments and watchdog rankings for 2024 identify Iran, China, Russia, Sudan, Israel/Palestine (Gaza/West Bank), and countries in active conflict (Yemen, South Sudan, Afghanistan) among the places with the most severe documented abuses; quantitative indexes and NGO world reports single out Iran, China, Russia, Sudan, Yemen, South Sudan and Afghanistan as among the worst performers in 2024 (for example: GRIP/URI and Statista list Iran at or near the bottom; HRW, Amnesty, and the State Department highlight Gaza/Israel, Sudan, Ukraine, and Russia for war crimes and other grave violations) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Country Reports and Human Rights Watch’s World Reports document large-scale abuses tied to war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, and extrajudicial killings across those settings; however, some official U.S. reporting was revised or narrowed in 2025, complicating year-to-year comparison [5] [6] [4] [7].
1. What the major watchdogs and indexes say about “worst” countries
Global quantitative rankings and thematic reports converge on a core set of countries suffering the highest levels of documented abuses in 2024. The Global Rights Project (GRIP) — cited by the University of Rhode Island and press coverage — and allied indices place Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, and South Sudan among the worst-performing states on a multi‑right scale in 2024 [2] [8]. Statista and theglobalеconomy data show Iran scoring at the bottom on human‑rights and rule‑of‑law indicators for 2024 [1] [9]. These indexes measure aggregated violations (physical integrity, civil and political rights, worker rights) rather than counting discrete incidents, but their results align with NGO reporting flagging those countries for severe abuses [2] [1].
2. War, atrocity investigations and conflict zones dominate qualitative reporting
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International emphasize armed conflicts and mass atrocity allegations in 2024 as drivers of the worst abuses: Gaza/Israel, Sudan, and Ukraine are repeatedly highlighted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, forced displacement and large civilian tolls [4] [3] [10]. HRW’s World Reports for 2024–25 devote major chapters to Gaza/West Bank, Sudan and Ukraine and specifically call out grave violations and potential crimes against humanity in those theaters [4] [3]. The Norwegian Refugee Council documented a sharp uptick in West Bank operations and demolitions in 1H 2024, further illustrating the concentration of severe violations in conflict-affected areas [11].
3. State actors repeatedly named for systemic repression
Beyond battlefield atrocities, a set of states feature in multiple sources for systemic repression: China for mass arbitrary detention and persecution (Xinjiang/Tibet); Russia for deportations and abuses in areas of military operations; Iran for repression and rights rollbacks; and authoritarian contexts such as North Korea for pervasive state violence — all receive sustained attention in NGO and government reporting on 2024 [4] [12] [1] [2]. Those findings come from HRW and State Department narratives and from aggregated index scores [4] [12] [1].
4. Why “highest number of documented abuses” is a fraught metric
No single source in the provided material publishes a global ranked tally of discrete abuse incidents by country for 2024–25. The U.S. State Department reports provide country narratives and categories of abuses rather than a numeric global ranking; GRIP and other indexes produce scores that reflect breadth and severity across many rights but not a simple count of abuses [5] [13] [8]. Watchdogs emphasize that conflict intensity, information access, and reporting capacity skew apparent counts: conflict zones generate many documented incidents, but some authoritarian states hide abuses and underreporting masks scale [4] [3].
5. Recent reporting changes that affect comparisons across 2024–25
Comparing 2024 and 2025 is complicated by changes in U.S. reporting practices: the State Department’s 2024 Country Reports were edited and in some cases narrowed in 2025, removing or compressing categories like prison conditions and gender‑based abuses, which watchdogs say understates abuses for some countries [5] [7] [14] [15]. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty publicly criticized those edits as politicizing or whitewashing the scale of certain abuses, which affects how researchers use the State reports for cross‑year comparisons [16] [15] [14].
6. Bottom line and limitations of current reporting
Available sources consistently identify Iran, China, Russia, war‑torn Sudan, Gaza/Israel, Yemen, South Sudan and Afghanistan among the most severe human‑rights problem spots in 2024, with indexes ranking Iran at or near the worst in 2024 and HRW/Amnesty spotlighting conflict zones for mass atrocity risks [1] [2] [3] [4]. However, no single provided source gives a definitive numeric “highest number of documented abuses” list for 2024–25; differences in methodology, recent revisions to the U.S. Country Reports, and underreporting in closed societies mean any definitive country‑by‑country counting is not available in the cited material [13] [5] [7].