are 147 States Parties to the UNCAT, and none has entered a reservation to this article, which demonstrates its universal acceptance.40 Article 15 evolved somewhat from the 1975 Declaration formulation, omitting “or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”41 and allowing statements made under torture to be used against the torturer as evidence that the statement was made:42 “Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.” 27. The UN Committee against Torture has indicated on a number of occasions that laws governing processes subject to Article 15 should expressly provide for the exclusion of evidence obtained by torture: where exclusion is simply a rule developed through case law this may not provide a secure enough guarantee to satisfy the requirements of Article 15.43 Provisions that permit a judicial authority to assess evidence “in accordance with his innermost conviction” or allowing “the free weighing of evidence” have been found to be inadequate.44 28. At a regional level, the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture was adopted by the Organization of American States soon after the UNCAT, on 9 December 1985. Article 10 of this treaty provides: “No statement that is verified as having been obtained through torture shall be admissible as evidence in legal proceeding, except in a legal action taken against a person or persons accused of having elicited through acts or torture, and only as evidence that the accused obtained such statement by such means.” Arguably this formulation has the same effect as Article 15 of the UNCAT, although the use of the word “verified” in place of “established” and limitation to “legal proceeding” (sic) rather than “any proceedings” could be said to restrict its ambit slightly. 29. In 1994, the Human Rights Committee issued an updated General Comment on Article 7 (General Comment No. 20) containing a similar admonition to the earlier General Comment: “It is important for the discouragement of violations under article 7 that the law must prohibit the use of admissibility in judicial proceedings of statements or confessions obtained through torture or other prohibited treatment.”45 39 Adopted by General Assembly Resolution 39/46 of 10 December 1984. Please note Austria declared upon ratification (29 July 1987) that it “regards article 15 as the legal basis for the inadmissibility provided for therein of the use of statements which are established to have been made as a result of torture.” 41 This omission, in view of subsequent jurisprudence on the absolute prohibition of all forms of ill-treatment, is no longer particularly significant. As Nowak and MacArthur note in their authoritative text The UN Convention Against Torture: A Commentary, 1st Ed 2008 at p 507, the drafters could not reach consensus on how to include other forms of ill-treatment in this particular protection, but this is hardly a sound basis on which to conclude that evidence obtained through cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is admissible under international law. 42 For a more complete picture of the evolution of the article, see Nowak and MacArthur, above, at pp 505-507. 43 See C. Ingelse, the UN Committee against Torture: an Assessment (The Hague: Kluwer Law International , 2001) at 379-380, citing numerous decisions of the Committee against Torture, e.g. UN doc. CAT/C/SR.61 at §§ 16, 28 and 53. 44 As above, citing UN doc. CAT/C/SR.79, § 43 and UN doc. CAT/C/SR.249, §§ 26 and 34. 45 Above note 35 at § 12. 40 7