Sure. Thank you very much for your question.
I think the first thing to say is that no one here is suggesting that having a separate offence for torture with respect to private actors somehow puts us not in conformity with our Convention against Torture obligations. As long as the existing offence stays as it is, and as long as we continue to undertake the actions that we are to take in order to prevent and discourage torture, we are domestically in conformity.
I would say that not every country around the world that engages in torture prefers to be held, or to have its officials held, to the very high standard of conduct that's required in the convention. The international concern is that there would be from some avenues an argument made that, if there is more than one way of defining torture, they could also water down their own provisions in terms of what they're criminalizing, and therefore not actually be meeting their obligations. That's part of it.
The other part is, as the committee against torture undertakes its functions to ask questions of states, one of the things it likes to rely on is statistics that come in, for example, about the times that torture has been charged and convicted. If you have more than one torture offence, it can make things difficult in terms of the clarity of the information that's being put forward internationally about what kind of conduct is being charged and prosecuted.