CAT/C/36/D/181/2001 page 12 acceptance, approval or accession establish the consent of a State to be bound by a treaty upon: […] (b) their deposit with the depositary […]”. The travaux préparatoires relating to this provision confirm that the State party is immediately bound by the obligations arising from the treaty, from the moment the instrument of ratification is deposited. 8.4 According to the complainants, the State party’s arguments call into question the very meaning of the act of ratification and would lead to a situation in which no State would have to answer for a failure to comply with its treaty obligations. 8.5 With regard to the specific legislative measures that a State must take in order to meet its treaty obligations, the complainants maintain that the manner in which the State in question fulfils its obligations is of little importance from the standpoint of international law. Moreover, they believe that international law is moving towards the elimination of the formalities of national law relating to ratification, on the principle that the norms of international law should be considered binding in the internal and international legal order as soon as a treaty has entered into force. The complainants add that the State party could have taken the opportunity to amend its national legislation even before it ratified the Convention. 8.6 Finally, the complainants recall that article 27 of the Vienna Convention prohibits the State party from invoking the provisions of its internal law as a justification for its failure to perform its treaty obligations. This provision has been interpreted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as an obligation for States to “modify the domestic legal order as necessary in order to give effect to their treaty obligations”.14 8.7 As a subsidiary argument, the complainants maintain that, even if one considers that the State party was not bound by its obligations from the moment the treaty was ratified, it has committed a violation of article 5 by not adopting appropriate legislation to comply with the Convention within a reasonable time frame. 8.8 Article 26 of the Vienna Convention establishes the obligation of parties to perform their obligations under international treaties in good faith; the complainants point out that, since it ratified the Convention Against Torture on 21 August 1986, the State party had 15 years before the submission of the present communication to implement the Convention, but did not do so. 8.9 In this regard, the Committee, in its concluding observations on the second periodic report of Senegal, had already recommended that “the State party should, during its current legislative reform, consider introducing explicitly in national legislation the following provisions: (a) The definition of torture set forth in article 1 of the Convention and the classification of torture as a general offence, in accordance with article 4 of the Convention, which would, inter alia, permit the State party to exercise universal jurisdiction as provided in articles 5 et seq. of the Convention; […]”.15 The State party has not followed up this recommendation and has unreasonably delayed adoption of the legislation necessary for implementing the Convention.