JUMP TO What to Know Current WPS Risks Current WPS Opportunities
What to Know
What to Know
Despite a ceasefire with Israel on June 24, 2025, the risk of renewed conflict threatens women’s safety, with nearly 600 civilians—including women and children—killed during the 12-day war. In its aftermath, Iranian authorities launched a new wave of arrests and executions, raising concerns about worsened repression as authorities seek to consolidate control. Women’s rights remain under assault since the Woman, Life, Freedom movement emerged in 2022, sparked by the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in morality police custody. While the movement mobilized Iranians calling for women’s rights and regime change, authorities violently suppressed activism and have continued to investigate, arrest, and execute protestors. Now, precarity and tightening repression following the ceasefire with Israel threaten to further undermine the safety and status of Iranian women and girls.
WPS Analysis
Since 2022, enforcement of morality laws has intensified, with women and girls arrested for allegedly violating hijab requirements, singing, or appearing on social media. Members of religious and ethnic minority groups—such as the Baha’i—are at particularly heightened risk of persecution and detention. In December 2024, Iran’s government adopted the Law on Protecting the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab, which instated lengthy prison terms and even death sentences for improper hijab. Although its implementation was postponed, authorities have continued to increase surveillance, including through a state-backed app that deputizes the public to report on women they think are violating morality restrictions. Women continue to experience violence both interpersonally and amidst regional armed conflict. Femicide increased by 16 percent in 2024 alongside repression, impunity for gender-based violence, and mounting stress and trauma. Despite these challenges, women continue to lead social movements, report on rights abuses as researchers and journalists, and advocate for women’s and human rights.
Any resumption of conflict—particularly with Israel or the US—not only directly threatens the lives of women and girls, but also risks obscuring worsening gender-based repression in Iran. Iranians involved with Woman, Life, Freedom may now be potentially endangered further after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly invoked the movement when calling for regime change during the June 2025 conflict. Four imprisoned women’s activists issued a letter cautioning against dependence on foreign powers for regime change and urging that political transformation must come from Iranians, while analysts have cautioned that external pressure may push Iranian leadership to harden its stances on rights. Iranian women—alongside Afghans—continue to push for the recognition of gender apartheid in the forthcoming UN treaty on crimes against humanity. This treaty, set for its next debate in October 2025, could unlock new legal and moral tools to pursue justice for women’s systematic repression.
Current WPS Risks
Current WPS Risks
Strait of Hormuz Deadlock Deepens Economic and Protection Risks
The standoff conflict centered on the Strait of Hormuz continues to destabilize a critical energy route and disrupt global supply chains, with threats to commercial shipping and restricted transit contributing to rising prices. Interruptions to energy flows are deepening economic pressure inside Iran and increasing the risk of broader food, fuel, and transport price shocks. For women and girls in Iran and beyond, these shocks are compounding existing inequalities, as structural barriers to employment limit income security and increase scarcity of household resources. Rising food and fuel prices globally disproportionately reduce women’s access to food and healthcare, particularly among female-headed households, while increasing unpaid care burdens.
Mass Arrests, Detention Abuses, and Death Sentences
The Iranian government has intensified a nationwide crackdown, with reports of at least 3,600 arrests since the war broke out, including a surge in the number of women and minors held on broadly defined national security charges. Women and girls have been detained for their participation in protests and online expression, and are often denied access to legal counsel, information about their charges, medical care, and hygiene products; at least 30 women arrested in connection with the January 2026 protests and wartime security developments were reportedly transferred to Vakilabad Prison, where many remain in legal limbo under poor detention conditions. This repression remains lethal: in April 2026, Maryam Hodavand was sentenced to death for her involvement in the January protests, becoming the third woman to face execution in recent months—amid allegations of coerced confessions and due process violations. This comes after 2025 marked the highest number of women executed in over two decades, with at least 48 women put to death.
State Repression and Tiered Internet Access Intensify Digital Exclusion
Authorities have sustained Iran’s longest recorded internet blackout into May 2026, while the rollout of “Internet Pro” has created a two-tier system in which select users can access faster, less restricted internet while most Iranians remain cut off or dependent on costly black-market VPNs. The shutdown has deepened economic strain, restricted access to independent news and communication, and limited documentation of human rights abuses amid ongoing repression. For women—who already face gendered barriers to formal employment and may rely on digital spaces for income, organizing, and connection—restricted internet access compounds financial insecurity, isolates activists and survivors, and makes it harder for families to locate or identify victims of state violence.
Long-term Health Impacts Amplify Gendered Risks
The war is expected to have long-term effects on Iranians, with women and girls especially impacted by war-related barriers to accessing medical services. Over 300 health facilities have already been damaged, and ongoing displacement places additional strain on the already weakened healthcare system. Women are increasingly forced to give birth in unsafe conditions with limited access to maternal and reproductive care.
Ceasefire Talks Offer Openings but Exclude Women
Ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Iran and the US have helped sustain de-escalation efforts and offer a pathway toward stabilizing civilian conditions, although tensions linked to the Strait of Hormuz persist. However, Iranian women are seemingly absent from these negotiations, and there is no clear indication that women are meaningfully represented on the US side at senior negotiating levels. This could limit the integration of protection, humanitarian access, and gender-responsive recovery priorities in conflict resolution efforts. The exclusion of women in agenda-setting roles risks reinforcing existing inequalities and undermining the durability and inclusivity of any eventual settlement.
War Worsens Environmental Catastrophe
Conflict—including targeted attacks on water and energy infrastructure that may amount to war crimes—is amplifying Iran’s climate crisis. Strikes on oil fields and refineries have led to massive pollution, including “black rain,” and emitted vast quantities of CO2. Not only does this drive displacement, health complications—including potential pregnancy complications—and disruptions to agricultural production in the short term, but increased emissions amplify the long-term toll of climate change. Desalination plants in Iran have been the target of attacks, compounding the once-in-a-century drought Iran already faces and the water stress facing the entire region. This water crisis—including rationing, worsening water quality, and declining pressure—undermines women and girls’ access to potable water for drinking, cooking, and hygiene while exacerbating socioeconomic stressors that drive gender-based violence and early marriage.
Current WPS Opportunities
Current WPS Opportunities
Extension of Fact-Finding Mandate
In January 2026, the UN Human Rights Council extended the mandate for the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran for one year and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran for two years. The Fact-Finding Mission has played a visible role in monitoring and condemning human rights abuses and repression targeting women and girls.
For more information, contact Gihan Elhadidy: [email protected]
This page was last updated on May 20, 2026.
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