E/CN.4/1991/17 page 89 282. Additional mechanisms are under consideration. The Commission will, during its forty-seventh session, discuss the desirability of an Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, instituting a system of periodic visits by independent experts to places of detention. 283. Much has been accomplished, but the final aim has not been achieved. Everything seems to be there to make the campaign against torture a successful one and nevertheless all human rights reports speak loudly of failure. All the rules are there but they remain paper formulas instead of living in the minds of men. The mutilated bodies found in ditches along the road and the empty eyes of the living torture victims tell us that the campaign against torture has to be relentlessly continued. 284. What has been accomplished has not been a waste of time and energy. On the contrary, it is the indispensable infrastructure for this continued campaign. The international campaign has now to be implemented on the national level, and the only bodies which can do so in a credible way are those which have endorsed this campaign on the international level, namely Governments. 285. On the national level, Governments are faced with a choice among many priorities. If they are confronted with a vociferous opposition or with an armed insurgency the paramount priority would seem to be the stifling of that opposition and the crushing of the insurgency. The possibility of realizing all other priorities, such as economic development, would seem, in the eyes of the authorities, to be completely dependent upon the realization of that paramount priority. Therefore all other priorities are made subservient to the paramount one. Under such circumstances torture is easily used for the dual purpose of obtaining information and instilling terror. Torture becomes a political tool for the realization of that paramount priority. But, since a Government is not a monolithic entity and policy goals are pursued through various Government branches, we often see the strange situation that one part of Government continues to endorse the campaign against torture on the international level, whereas at home another part practises or condones torture as a political tool. When the Government is confronted with that inconsistency, it usually denies it, since it is impossible to reconcile it or to explain it away. 286. The organized world community should realize that the campaign against torture will completely lose its credibility if this situation is allowed to continue. New rules may be drawn up and new mechanisms may be established but they will be to no avail as long as the glaring discrepancy between behaviour at the international and national levels is tolerated. Governments should realize that it is not impossible but, on the contrary, a compelling necessity to pursue several priorities at the same time. They should learn to profit from history's lesson that internal order ultimately can never - or at best only temporarily - be restored and maintained at the cost of basic human rights. During the past few years we have seen throughout the world the downfall of regimes which had refused to take that lesson to heart. But obviously there still are Governments which think that they will be the exception to the rule.