The Prohibition of Torture and Ill-treatment in the African Human Rights System: A HANDBOOK FOR VICTIMS AND THEIR ADVOCATES massive violations’ of Charter provisions.51 Under the Charter, emergency situations are those that reveal a pattern of serious or massive violations. Such a pattern could be shown to exist through evidence of impunity or absence of consequences for acts in violation of Article 5 of the Charter. Under Article 46 of the Charter, the Commission may ‘resort to any appropriate method of investigation’52 including a request for information from ‘the Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity or any other person capable of enlightening it’ as well as fact-finding missions, discussed in further detail in Part D.53 In relation to the prevention of and protection against torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, this could involve the use of experts, NGOs, receiving testimonies from victims, survivors and perpetrators, and mechanisms for the collection of evidence that do not endanger the victims. Before the Commission may publish its decisions or annual Activity Report, it must submit them for consideration by the AU Assembly, as stipulated in Article 59 of the Charter. Although the Charter does not necessarily require it to do so, the Assembly usually concludes its consideration by authorizing or withholding authority for publication of the report or decisions. The decisions are thus included in the Commission’s Activity Reports to the AU Assembly. Before the AU replaced the OAU, the Assembly did not take much notice of these decisions and approved the Commission’s Activity Reports without much debate. Since 2002, many more African Governments have engaged with these reports, leading to more rigorous and politically coloured discussions of the Activity Reports at the Executive Council, to which the Assembly delegated its authority to consider the Commission’s annual reports. The Executive Council has on a number of occasions decided to delay the publication of the Commission’s Activity Reports. For example, at its Eighteenth Ordinary Session in January 2011, the Executive Council did not authorise the publication of the Twenty-Ninth Activity Report. Instead, it called on the African Commission to ‘incorporate in its report, the responses by Member States in order to have a balanced view’, and to ‘engage concerned member states in the verification of the facts and resubmit its report to the Nineteenth Ordinary 51 52 53 28 African Charter, supra note 9, Articles 58 (1)-(3). For an analysis of Article 58 of the African Charter, see: C. A. Odinkalu and R. Mdoe,, Article 58 of the African Charter on Human Rights: A Legal Analysis and Proposals for Implementation, INTERIGHTS (1996); R. Murray, “Serious and Massive Violations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: A Comparison with the Inter-American and European Mechanisms”, 17 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 109 (1999). African Charter, supra note 9, Article 46. Under the AU Constitutive Act, the Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union replaces the Secretary-General of the OAU as the head of the Secretariat of the AU. AU Constitutive Act, supra note 11. African Charter, supra note 9, Article 46.