Interpretation § 1. It is possible to extract from §1 three essential factors necessary for an act to qualify as torture: • The infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering; • By or with the consent or acquiescence of the State authorities; • For a specific purpose, such as gaining information, punishment or intimidation. A substantially similar definition can be found in the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture23. The UN Special Rapporteur has applied the same definition. It is in line with the definition suggested or acted upon by such international bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee . However, while the broad convergence of international instruments and international jurisprudence suggests a general acceptance of the main elements contained in the definition set out in Article 1 of the Convention24, it is increasingly widely recognised that the definition in Article 1 is not necessarily applicable in its totality in other spheres of international law.25 For example, in a 2001 decision by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (hereafter: “the ICTY”), it was stated that: II. INDIVIDUAL ANALYSIS OF ARTICLES 1–16 OF THE CONVENTION 2. ANALYSIS OF SUBSTANTIVE PROVISIONS “the definition of torture contained in the Convention cannot be regarded as the definition of torture under customary international law, which is binding regardless of the context in which it is applied.”26 24 The Act of Torture The act of torture in the Convention refers to the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering upon a person, which can be either mental or physical in nature and caused by either a single isolated act, or a number of such acts. The nature and degree of suffering experienced by an individual may be difficult to verify objectively. It may depend on many personal characteristics of the victim —for example sex, age, religious or cultural beliefs, or health. In other cases, certain forms of ill-treatment or certain aspects of detention which would not constitute torture on their own may do so in combination with each other. There was little substantive discussion on the issue of what constitutes “severe” by the Working Group of the Commission on Human Rights which drafted the Convention. However, the framers of the Draft Convention for the Prevention and Suppression of Torture27 did address the problem. Although this draft was rejected by the Working Group, its deliberations led to the formalising of this terminology28: