144. It must be noted that the Respondent State has not conceded to the violations either. It simply informs the Commission that the grievances highlighted in the communications will be addressed by the political developments initiated, in particular, the Signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement. The African Commission will therefore have to address each and every allegation made by the Complainants to ascertain their veracity. Alleged violation of Articles Article 4 and Article 5 145. With respect to allegations of violation of Articles 4 and 5 of the African Charter, the Complainants allege large-scale and indiscriminate killings, torture, poisoning of wells, rape, forced evictions and displacement, destruction of property, etc. 146. Article 4 of the Charter protects the right to life and provides that “Human beings are inviolable. Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life and the integrity of his person. No one may be arbitrarily deprived of his right”. The right to life is the supreme right of the human being. It is basic to all human rights and without it all other rights are without meaning. The term ‘life’ itself has been given a relatively broad interpretation by courts internationally, to include the right to dignity and the right to livelihood. 147. It is the duty of the State to protect human life against unwarranted or arbitrary actions by public authorities as well as by private persons. The duty of the State to protect the right to life has been interpreted broadly to include prohibition of arbitrary killing by agents of the State and to strictly control and limit the circumstances in which a person may be deprived of life by State authorities. These include the necessity to conduct effective official investigations when individuals have been killed as a result of the use of force by agents of the State, to secure the right to life by making effective provisions in criminal law to deter the commission of offences against the person, to establish lawenforcement machinery for the prevention, suppression, investigation and penalisation of breaches of criminal law. In addition to the foregoing, the State is duty bound to take preventive operational measures to protect an individual whose life is at risk from the criminal acts of another 9 10 individual. InArticle 19 v Eritrea this Commission noted that ‘arbitrariness is not to be equated with against the law but must be interpreted more broadly to include elements of inappropriateness, injustice, lack of predictability and due process…’. 148. States as well as non-state actors, have been known to violate the right to life, but the State has duo legal obligations, to respect the right to life, by not violating that right itself, as well as to protect the right to life, by protecting persons within its jurisdiction from non-state actors. In Zimbabwe Human 11 Rights NGO Forum/Zimbabwe , the Commission noted that an act by a private individual or [nonstate actor] and therefore not directly imputable to a State, can generate responsibility of the State, not because of the act itself, but because of the lack of due diligence on the part of the State to prevent 12 the violation or for not taking the necessary steps to provide the victims with reparation. 149. In the present communication, the State claims it has investigated some of the allegations of extra-judicial and summary executions. The Complainant submits that no effective official investigations were carried out to address cases of extrajudicial or summary executions. 150. To effectively discharge itself from responsibility, it is not enough to investigate. In Amnesty International, Comite Loosli Bachel and Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Association of 13 Members of the Episcopal Conference of East Africa/Sudan the African Commission held that “investigations into extra-judicial executions must be carried out by entirely independent individuals, provided with the necessary resources, and their findings must be made public and 14 prosecutions initiated in accordance with the information uncovered. In Jordan v United Kingdom the European Court of Human Rights held that, an effective official investigation must be carried out with promptness and reasonable expedition. The investigation must be carried out for the purpose of securing the effective implementation of domestic laws, which protect the right to life. The investigation or the result thereof must be open to public scrutiny in order to secure accountability. For an investigation into a summary execution carried out by a State agent to be effective, it may generally be regarded as necessary for the person responsible for the carrying out of the investigation to be independent from those implicated in the events. This means not only a lack of hierarchical or institutional connection but also a practical independence