PART B: Substantive Norms on Torture in the African Regional Human Rights System and persons undergoing procedures of removal from its territory. Thus, collective expulsion of non-nationals is prohibited under the Charter as a violation of the right of respect for human dignity and the right to due process.257 k. Enforced Disappearances Enforced disappearance refers to the ‘arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law’.258 While the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances entered into force in December 2010, as at November 2013, it had been ratified by only a handful of African states.259 The African Charter does not include an explicit prohibition against enforced disappearance; however the African Commission has been presented with cases involving alleged enforced disappearances, and has held that: enforced disappearance violates a range of human rights including, the right to security and dignity of person, the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the right to humane conditions of detention, the right to a legal personality, the right to a fair trial, the right to a family life, and when the disappeared person is killed, the right to life.260 In J.E. Zitha and P.J.L. Zitha v. Mozambique, the Commission characterised enforced disappearance as a continuing violation of the Charter. Following an analysis of international jurisprudence relating to acts that constitute a continuing violation, the Commission held that ‘the enforced disappearance…constitutes a continuing violation of his human rights…’261 l. Extraordinary Renditions In 2009, a complaint against Djibouti was confidentially submitted to the African Commission.262 The complainant, a Yemeni national, alleged that he was taken 257 African Charter, supra note 9, Article 12(5); ACHPR, John K. Modise v. Botswana, Comm. No. 97/93; ACERWC, Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and Open Society Justice Initiative (on behalf of children of Nubian descent in Kenya) v. Kenya, Comm. No. 002/2009. 258 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Dissapearance, adopted on 20 December 2006, entered into force on 23 December 2010, UN Doc. A/61/448, Article 2. 259 The Convention has been ratified by the following African States: Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia and Zambia. Nigeria acceded to the Convention in July 2009. It has been signed by the following African States: Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda. 260 ACHPR, J.E. Zitha and P.J.L. Zitha v. Mozambique, Comm. No. 361/08, 9th Extraordinary Session (1 April 2011), para. 81. 261 Ibid., para. 94. 262 ACHPR, Al-Asad v. Djibouti, Comm. No. 383/2010, 49th Ordinary Session (April-May 2011), for more 65