85. In view of the importance of this question of law, and the importance which the complainant party appears to give Article 1, the African Commission should, in the present communication, determine the legal nature of the obligation which the afore-mentioned Article imposes on States Parties. The extent or the scope of the obligation contained in Article 1of the Charter 86. Concerning the scope or the extent of the obligation imposed by Article 1 of the African Charter, it 20 is important to point out that it had been clarified sui generis , (in a distinctive manner) and that the Commission’s jurisprudence is abundant enough in this area. 87. Thus, according to the Commission’s jurisprudence, Article 1 confers on the Charter the legally binding character generally attributed to international Treaties of this nature. The responsibility of the State Party is established by virtue ofArticle 1 of the Charter in case of the violation of any of the provisions of the Charter. Article 1 places the States Parties under the obligation of respecting, protecting, promoting and implementing the rights. 88. The respect for the rights imposes on the State the negative obligation of doing nothing to violate the said rights. The protection targets the positive obligation of the State to guarantee that private individuals do not violate these rights. In this context, the Commission ruled that the negligence of a State to guarantee the protection of the rights of the Charter having given rise to a violation of the said rights constitutes a violation of the rights of the Charter which would be attributable to this State, even where it is established that the State itself or its officials are not directly responsible for such violations 21 but have been perpetrated by private individuals. 89. According to the permanent jurisprudence of the Commission, Article 1 imposes restrictions on the authority of the State Institutions in relation to the recognized rights. This Article places on the State Parties the positive obligation of preventing and punishing the violation by private individuals of the rights prescribed by the Charter. Thus any illegal act carried out by an individual against the rights guaranteed and not directly attributable to the State can constitute, as had been indicated earlier, a cause of international responsibility of the State, not because it has itself committed the act in question, but because it has failed to exercise the conscientiousness required to prevent it from happening and for not having been able to take the appropriate measures to pay compensation for the 22 prejudice suffered by the victims . 90. In this context of prevention, the State should carry out investigations so as to detect the various risks of violence and take the necessary preventive measures. The problem here does not concern so much the acts violating the rights but rather of knowing whether the State took the tangible measures to prevent the imminent risks of perpetration of the said acts. It is not a question of inculpating the State for its lack of conscientiousness regarding any act perpetrated in relation to the guaranteed rights but of knowing whether the State, considering the imminent risks of serious violations, used due diligence that was required. Under the terms of comparative law, it is the position that was taken by the InterAmerican Human Rights Court in the Vélasquez Rodriguez case in the following terms: 91. “an illegal act which violates human rights and which is initially not directly imputable to a state (for example because it is the act of a private person or because the person responsible has not been identified) can lead to the international responsibility of State, not because of the act itself, but because of the absence of due diligence to prevent the violation or to respond to it as required by the convention.” 92. In the case Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum vrs. Zimbabwe, the Commission had indicated and ruled that the doctrine ofdue diligence should be applied on a case by case basis. On the nature of the obligation contained in Article 1 of the Charter 93. The scope of the State’s general obligation to protect, sanctioned by Article 1 of the Charter having been clarified, it is therefore necessary to determine the nature of this obligation. Is it an obligation of diligence or an obligation of result? 94. Though by their origin, the obligation of diligence and the obligation of result emanate from the domestic law systems, particularly from continental civil law, this term has also been frequently used in th 23 international law since the 20 century .