PART D: Torture in the Promotional Mandate of the African Commission on ‘Key Human Rights Issues Affecting Women Living with HIV in Africa’, organised by the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) and Those At Risk, Vulnerable to and Affected by HIV in Africa of the African Commission together with UNAIDS in Dakar, Senegal, from 3 to 5 October 2013. The Seminar culminated in the drafting of a resolution on ‘Involuntary Sterilisation and Protection of Human Rights in Access to HIV Services’540, which served as the basis for the Commission’s resolution with the same name adopted at the Fifty-fourth session in November 2013.541 XV. Resolutions Under its promotional mandate, the Commission adopts resolutions, which are recommendatory in nature and may be thematic or country-specific. 1. Thematic Resolutions Torture and other ill-treatment are most likely to occur in places of detention. This issue became the focus of the Commission’s first resolution related to torture and other ill-treatment, when it adopted the ‘Resolution on Prisons in Africa’ in 1995.542 In July 2003, the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government endorsed the Fair Trial Guidelines, which contain due process standards for the prevention of torture and the protection of victims of such practices.543 At the same summit, the African Union also adopted the Guidelines and Measures for the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture, Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Africa (Robben Island Guidelines).544 Both the Fair Trial and Robben Island Guidelines are ‘soft law’ standards developed by the African Commission to amplify and supplement the provisions of the African Charter and other analogous treaty instruments prohibiting torture in Africa. In particular, these guidelines aim to clarify the range of measures that States and their representatives may undertake to comply with relevant treaty standards. Various measures include legislation, procedural safeguards, oversight mechanisms, evidentiary rules, police standards, measures relating to prosecutorial and judicial conduct (such as training), and measures of inter-departmental and inter-State co-operation. In this way, the guidelines help define the scope of victims’ entitlement to remedies. They are now discussed in more detail. 540 ACHPR,Press Statement on the Regional Seminar on Key Human Rights Issues Affecting Women Living with HIV in Africa (5 October 2013). 541 ACHPR, Resolution on Involuntary Sterilisation and the Protection of Human Rights in Access to HIV Services, ACHPR/Res.260, 54th Ordinary Session (5 November 2013). 542 ACHPR, Resolution on Prisons in Africa, No. 19, 17th Ordinary Session (22 March 1995). 543 Fair Trial Guidelines, supra note 63. 544 Robben Island Guidelines, supra note 63. 127