PART C: Protection against Torture: Procedures before the African Commission and African Human Rights Court 13. Enforcement of Decisions The biggest challenge currently facing the African Human Rights System is regards the implementation of its decisions. Though the Commission’s Rules of Procedure provide for monitoring and follow- up of the measures taken by States to implement its decisions,516 there are still serious deficiencies in this regard. According to some commentators, States have failed to comply with the Commission’s decisions in more than 60 per cent of cases, and full compliance has been reported in only 14 per cent of cases.517 This has been attributed to a number of factors, including, notably, the lack of political will on behalf of States to implement recommendations. Monitoring and follow-up of the Commission’s decisions is carried out by its Working Group on Communications, which is mandated to ‘coordinate follow-up on decisions of the Commission on communications, by concerned Rapporteurs’.518 However, this recent expansion of the Working Group’s mandate still falls short of an effective enforcement mechanism as exists for other regional juridical bodies such as the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which is the enforcement mechanism for decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The procedure for follow-up and monitoring of the implementation of Commission recommendations is also unclear. Upon the adoption and dissemination of a decision, the Commission has provided little clarification on the follow-up process, and it is not clear whether the Commission’s practice includes following-up with States directly. While Rule 112 does set out the procedure for follow-up, there are no binding mechanisms to ensure enforcement. As a result, and as has been pointed out by commentators, ‘the burden of enforcement in the majority of cases to date rests on the complainants’.519 The Commission’s Rules of Procedure do enable it to bring situations of non-compliance to the attention of the Sub-Committee of the Permanent Representatives Committee and the Executive Council on the Implementation of Decisions of the African Union;, however as of November 2013, this procedure had not led to any formal sanctions against States for failure to implement recommendations of the Commission. In addition, Rule 112 of the Rules of Procedure provide for the inclusion of information regarding the follow-up procedures in its annual activity reports. However short of this unwanted attention, there are no meaningful consequences for States that have failed to implement the Commission’s 516 ACHPR,Rules of Procedure, supra note 43, Rule 112. 517 REDRESS Report, supra note 490, p. 26. 518 ACHPR, Resolution on the expansion of the mandate of the working group on communications and modifying its composition, ACHPR/Res.255(LII)12, 52nd Ordinary Session (22 October 2012). 519 REDRESS Report, supra note 490, p. 89. 117