.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran is rated as one of the world's worst countries for torture, impunity, and state violence, according to the 2026 Global Torture Index, the latest annual report by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).
"Iran scores at the most severe level on six of the Index's seven thematic pillars—political commitment, police and institutional violence, impunity, victims' rights, the right to defend human rights, and protection for all—and at a high-risk level on conditions in detention," OMCT said in the report, released on Thursday in Geneva ahead of the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
The organization noted that the findings point to "a system in which torture functions not as an exception but as an instrument of governance."
Geneva-based OMCT is the world's largest coalition of non-governmental organizations fighting against torture, arbitrary detention, summary and extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, and other serious human rights violations. The Iran-specific findings were produced in collaboration with Impact Iran, a rights group focused on accountability in the country.
The report points to several factors driving the risk of torture in Iran. Tehran has not ratified the UN Convention against Torture and does not criminalize torture as a distinct offense, while its legal code still permits punishments such as flogging and amputation. Courts can convict defendants on the basis of confessions alone, which the report says creates strong incentives to extract statements through torture, including confessions later aired on state media.
Attacks by Israel and the United States during the June 2025 military escalation, which reportedly killed more than 1,100 people, many of them civilians, "have further increased the risk of torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, and other serious human rights violations," the organization said. OMCT noted the report's release comes as US-Iran peace talks continue, stressing that the prohibition on torture is absolute and applies even during armed conflict.
The report also points to a crackdown in December 2025 and January 2026, during which OMCT and Impact Iran say security forces fired on civilians, including inside hospitals, more than 50,000 people were arrested, and over 7,000 were killed. "In Iran, torture is not a failure of the system—it is the system," Impact Iran Executive Director Rose Richter said.
OMCT is calling on Iran to halt executions and judicial corporal punishment, ratify the UN Convention against Torture, criminalize torture, end the use of coerced confessions, and grant the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran unhindered access.
The 2026 Global Torture Index, the second edition of the annual tool, assessed risk factors across 39 countries worldwide, up from 26 in its inaugural 2025 edition. It found that torture remains "deeply embedded in law, policy, and practice" in Iran.
