Minors Killed During Iran’s Nationwide Protests: Ongoing Documentation and Uncertainty
As nationwide protests in Iran have been met with widespread arrests and the use of lethal force, growing evidence indicates that a significant number of school-aged children were among those killed.
As nationwide protests in Iran have been met with widespread arrests and the use of lethal force, growing evidence indicates that a significant number of school-aged children were among those killed. While multiple actors have released figures and partial documentation, the final and fully verified number of deaths of minors remains unclear, reflecting broader challenges related to access, transparency, and verification.
The Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations has reported that the number of children killed during the protests has exceeded 160. According to the council’s spokesperson, Mohammad Habibi, new names of minors have continued to surface over time, even after earlier lists were believed to be complete. In public statements, the council has described the documentation process as ongoing and noted that the victims were children and adolescents who would still be attending classes if their lives had not been cut short.
Iranian authorities, for their part, state that the overall number of people killed during the protests stands at 3,117. Officials have acknowledged that this figure is not final and that authorities do not yet possess the full list of names. To address this, the government has launched a public website inviting families to submit additional information and names of those believed to have died during the unrest. While authorities - including members of parliament overseeing educational affairs - have confirmed that minors under the age of 18 have been among those killed, they have not published a specific breakdown identifying which of those killed are minors. They have also indicated that detailed data from law-enforcement agencies regarding the number of detained, injured, or killed students has not yet been made public.
At least ten of the student names documented by the teachers’ council do not appear in the government’s published list. At the same time, available comparisons suggest that the official figures are broadly close to those reported by teachers’ representatives, underscoring both areas of overlap and that available data is changing as more fatalities come to light.
Human rights organizations have also documented child and student casualties. Aggregated data published by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reports 6,941 confirmed deaths overall, including 171 children. HRANA’s reporting is based on compiling information from families, local sources, activists, and media outlets. The organization has not released a public list of names for child victims and notes that an additional 11,630 cases remain under review, indicating that casualty figures remain provisional.
Arrests increased sharply during the protests, with human rights groups estimating that tens of thousands of people were detained, though precise figures remain difficult to verify due to restricted access and limited official disclosure. HRANA reports 50,921 arrests, 11,021 seriously injured civilians, 307 reported cases of forced confessions, and 11,047 summonses. Reports of student arrests have also emerged, raising further concerns about the impact of the crackdown on educational communities.
Despite the publication of official figures and ongoing documentation by teachers’ associations, human rights organizations, and journalists, the full scope of student deaths has not yet been conclusively established. Differences in methodologies, continued review of unresolved cases, and the absence of detailed official breakdowns mean that current numbers should be understood as evolving rather than definitive.
What remains consistent across all available sources is that children and students were among those killed during the protests. Documentation efforts continue alongside broader attempts to establish a comprehensive and accurate account of the human cost of the unrest.