institution of the OAU or an African Organization recognized by the OAU'. Accordingly, the Commission's protective and interpretive mandates under the African Charter flow from the aforementioned provisions and should be read together with the relevant substantive provisions in the Charter to determine its material jurisdiction in a given matter12 . 47. The question which follows is whether the Commission's contentious jurisdiction extends to the substantive provisions of treaties other than the African Charter, including the Protocol. 48. The Commission notes in this respect that the provisions of the African Charter do not expressly confine its contentious jurisdiction to the substantive delimitations outlined in the Charter. Indeed, the African Commission, congruent to the practice of other human rights treaty bodies has progressively adopted various approaches for shaping its material jurisdiction, either through a teleological interpretation of the Charter or the adoption of a treaty supplement. 49. The second approach refers. to the adoption of tre~ty supplements, commonly referred to ,as ~protocols'. In this respect, while a 'Convention' or 'Charter' denotes a formal agreement between States, a protocol is one of the means through which the agreement can be modified. Protocols modify the parent treaty in at least three ways13 : first, they elaborate on or clarify a substantive provision existing in the parent treaty; second, they address a new substantive area that has not been included in the original text of a treaty; and lastly, they address procedural aspects related to the operation, and enforcement of the parent treaty14 . Notably, a single protocol can modify the parent treaty in all three respects. Accordingly, as instruments derived from the parent treaty, they only apply to those State parties that have agreed to be bound by the parent treaty. However, protocols do not automatically bind these State Parties unless they independentl)f: ratify the protocol, and are thus" optional" in nature. 50. In summary, whereas a teleological interpretation does not ipso facto extend the contentious jurisdiction of the treaty body, but rather adds a different dimension to existing boundaries, the adoption of protocols can and often results in extending these boundaries. Accordingly, the African Charter, through the operation of Article 66 read with Article 45, provides the avenue for extending the Commission's contentious jurisdiction to other treaties. This finding does not strictly preclude the development of treaties outside of the