African NGO forum urges Sudan to open sites to chemical weapons inspectors

Rights groups call on African Commission to pressure Sudanese Armed Forces over allegations

Children among hundreds of people fleeing from the Zamzam displacement camp near El Fasher, Sudan, in 2025. EPA

African civil society groups have called on Sudan to allow international inspectors into the country to investigate accusations that the Sudanese army used chemical weapons in its war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

In a resolution adopted at the end of a three-day forum in Senegal's capital, Dakar, on Saturday, NGOs urged the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to demand that Sudan allow the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to send technical teams.

The commission began a session in Dakar on Monday.

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The NGO forum called for Sudan to declare any chemical weapons production sites and the whereabouts of munitions, and to let the OPCW verify and destroy them.

The resolution also condemned "massive war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the two parties to the conflict". It called for a ceasefire monitored by an independent international body and an end to foreign weapons, funding and diplomatic backing for the warring parties.

Washington found in April last year that Sudan's government had used chemical weapons in 2024 and imposed sanctions. A second round of sanctions took effect in July.

Sudan denies the charges. In July, its Foreign Ministry said the country "neither produces, possesses nor uses chemical weapons" and called the US sanctions "unilateral and unlawful".

In an interim report circulated at an OPCW meeting in July, a Sudanese national committee said that it had found no evidence.

After the meeting, the US representative said that "domestic bureaucratic mechanisms are not a substitute" for independent verification.

Both sides in Sudan's war have faced sanctions over breaches of international law. The US found in January 2025 that the RSF and allied militias had committed genocide in Darfur, while UN investigators said in February that the paramilitary's group's capture of El Fasher last year bore "hallmarks of genocide".

The NGO forum noted that about 16 million people have been forced from their homes and more than 20 million face hunger since the war began in April 2023.