This STATE OF THE NATION report focuses on several grave human rights violations by state actors documented in 2022. The report focuses on data on the victims/ survivors, perpetrators of the heinous acts, their locality, circumstances and services provided by IMLU. In this report, we have painstakingly endeavoured to confirm all information relating to each violation including taking witness statements, survivors’ statements, next of kin statements, written consent, and forensic medical legal documentation of injuries and cause of death in relation to fatalities. We, however, apply the word ‘alleged’ in this report not because we have not confirmed the causality of the injuries or deaths or the perpetrators and circumstances, but as a legal technicality, since most of these violations have not been tried in a court of law.

The violations covered in this report include:
a) Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (TCIDT) as defined under the UN Conventions against Torture (UNCAT). The main features of TCIDT
are the involvement of a public official to inflict severe pain or suffering with intent, and a specific purpose.
b) Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions are the deliberate killings of individuals outside of any legal framework disregarding the right to life.
Extrajudicial killing means intentionally causing the death of the victim. According to the UN Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions (1991), extrajudicial executions include political assassinations; deaths resulting from torture or ill-treatment in prison or detention; deaths resulting
from enforced disappearances; deaths resulting from the excessive use of force by law enforcement personnel; executions without due process, and acts of genocide.
c) Enforced Disappearances as defined under the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance- considered to be the arrest, detention,
abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places such a person outside the
protection of the law.