Sudan’s government held a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council for the entire period in which it is now alleged to have built a secret chemical weapons program, diverted humanitarian chlorine meant for drinking water into makeshift bombs, and tested those weapons in remote desert sites, according to a Washington Post investigation published this month.
The UN General Assembly elected Sudan to the 47-member Human Rights Council on October 11, 2022, for a three-year term running from 2023 through the end of 2025. That term covers the entire window described in the Post’s reporting: the diversion of chlorine shipments, the construction of chemical warheads on Sudanese military bases, the desert weapons tests captured on video, and the suspected chlorine gas attacks on Rapid Support Forces (RSF) positions at the Al Jaili oil refinery and Garri Military Base in September 2024. Sudan’s seat on the council did not lapse until after that same period closed.
The documents reviewed by the Post, including internal videos, messages, and voice notes obtained from Middle Eastern security officials, describe a chemical weapons effort run by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s ruling general. The material references a stockpile of as many as 290 chlorine munitions, includes documents describing “dual-effect” bombs packed with chlorine gas and explosives, and shows officers discussing targets where the gas could reach entrenched RSF fighters. One message sent to an officer involved in airstrikes attached video of a burn victim with the caption “Your cooking.” Gareth Williams, a former senior official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told the Post the indicators are strongly consistent with a chemical weapons program.
The same Human Rights Council that seated Sudan as a voting member is also the body that created the mechanism now investigating Sudan’s own conduct. On October 11, 2023, one year into Sudan’s term, the council voted to establish the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan to investigate violations committed in the civil war. Sudan served on the council that created the mission and remained a member as the council extended the mission’s mandate in October 2024 and again in October 2025, all while serving as a voting member on Sudan’s own human rights record.
The Human Rights Council has a mechanism to remove a member accused of gross and systematic human rights violations. The General Assembly used it in 2011 to suspend Libya from the council during Muammar Gaddafi’s crackdown on protesters, and again in 2022 to suspend Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. No comparable vote was brought against Sudan during its term, despite a UN fact-finding mission operating throughout that same period, under that same council, examining accusations that included ethnic violence in Darfur that the UN itself has said bore “the defining characteristics of genocide.”
Chlorine used in the alleged bomb program appears, according to the Post’s reporting, to have been diverted in part from supplies meant for civilian water treatment. UNICEF confirmed it had supplied chlorine gas to Khartoum’s state water corporation from 2023 through 2025 for use at water treatment plants, one of which is named in the leaked documents. A UNICEF spokesperson said the agency has no record of its chlorine being diverted or misused, adding that chlorine supplied by UNICEF has one purpose: making water safe to drink.
Al-Burhan has denied that Sudan developed or used chemical weapons, and the Sudanese government did not respond to the Post’s requests for comment. He is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly later this month, the same institution whose Human Rights Council seated his government throughout the period the new documents describe.
A Council Full of the Accused
The Human Rights Council has long seated governments accused of the same abuses the council exists to police. China, currently serving a term through 2026, sits on the council while facing accusations from UN human rights experts themselves of mass detention and forced labor targeting Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Cuba, also currently serving, holds elections in which no opposition party may compete and jails dissidents under laws the UN’s own human rights office has repeatedly criticized. Qatar and Pakistan, both elected to terms running through 2027, govern under legal systems that criminalize homosexuality and, in Pakistan’s case, impose the death penalty for blasphemy. Vietnam, a continuing member, operates a one-party state that regularly imprisons journalists and bloggers.
When the General Assembly elected its 2025-2027 class of council members, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a body that tracks the council’s own membership standards, warned that several incoming and continuing members were themselves implicated in potential mass atrocities, naming Cameroon, China, Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan specifically.
The council’s contrast between Iran and Saudi Arabia is its own case study in inconsistency. In December 2022, the UN’s Economic and Social Council expelled Iran from the separate Commission on the Status of Women mid-term, over its deadly crackdown on women protesting the death of Mahsa Amini. Fifteen months later, in March 2024, that same Commission elected Saudi Arabia, a country that maintains a male guardianship system controlling women’s ability to travel, marry, and make basic legal decisions, as its chair. UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer called the appointment akin to putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.
The pattern extends well beyond the Human Rights Council. In April 2026, the UN’s Economic and Social Council nominated Iran to the Committee for Programme and Coordination, a body that helps shape UN policy on human rights, women’s rights, disarmament, and counterterrorism. The nomination came with backing from the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Australia, with only the United States objecting, and is expected to be finalized by the General Assembly in November 2026 without a vote, as is customary for such recommendations. Iran secured the seat months after carrying out the largest number of executions in the country in nearly four decades in 2025, a pace human rights monitors estimated at roughly four executions a day.
At the same ECOSOC session, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan were elected to the UN’s Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, the body responsible for accrediting and overseeing access for thousands of NGOs operating across the UN system. The United States again stood alone in breaking from consensus. Sudan’s presence on that committee came within months of the Washington Post’s reporting on its alleged chemical weapons program, placing the same government a second time on a UN body positioned to shape how the rest of the world’s civil society organizations operate.
A Council Fixated on One Country
While seating governments accused of genocide, forced labor, and chemical weapons programs, the Human Rights Council has directed a disproportionate share of its condemnations at a single democracy: Israel. According to the UN Watch Database, the council has adopted 112 resolutions against Israel since its founding in 2006, compared with 45 against Syria, 16 against Iran, 11 against Russia, and just four against Venezuela, despite each of those countries’ documented atrocities during the same period.
Israel is also the only country in the world subject to a standing item on the council’s permanent agenda. Agenda Item 7, adopted when the council was created, requires every regular session to include a dedicated debate on Israel’s human rights record, a scrutiny applied to no other nation on earth, including states currently under UN investigation for war crimes, genocide, or, in Sudan’s case, an alleged chemical weapons program.
