CAT/C/66/2 during visits and thanks them all for their work in promoting and supporting the Optional Protocol. IV. Issues of note arising from the work of the Subcommittee during the period under review A. 1. Development of working practices Visits 35. Owing in part to the reduced levels of staff resourcing available to it for much of the year, the Subcommittee was only able to complete six visits in 2018. Only 8 visits were planned, compared to the 10 in previous years. (Two of the eight visits could not in fact be undertaken. The planned visit to Rwanda could not be undertaken for the reasons given in paragraphs 11 and 38 of the present document, and an eighth visit that had been planned to take place also could not be undertaken.) The reduction in staffing at the professional level has also caused a more general slowing of momentum in the work of the Subcommittee, which has direct implications on the effectiveness of its preventive mandate, and, more specifically, of its visiting mandate. Although strengthened at the end of 2018 by the appointment of an additional staff member at the professional level, who is externally supported, the Subcommittee was not able to maintain its visiting programme at the level it had been at in the past and will not be able to properly fulfil its mandate as defined by the Optional Protocol without a strengthening of the core secretariat. 36. The Subcommittee reiterates the point made in its 2017 annual report, that the failure to increase operational capacity in line with the expanding numbers of States parties, if unaddressed, will diminish the preventive impact of the Optional Protocol, and undermine the proactive nature of the system of prevention which it establishes. It is imperative that States parties come forward to strengthen the support base for the Subcommittee if it is to function as it ought. 37. Moreover, the Subcommittee continues to encounter a steady increase in challenges to its Optional Protocol-mandated visits, including but not limited to the dates on which such visits are to be undertaken and the scope of its visiting mandate. It is therefore important to stress that the essence of preventive visiting as an element of torture prevention lies in conducting unannounced visits to places where persons are, or may be, deprived of their liberty, at a time of the Subcommittee’s own choosing. This is the essential hallmark of the Optional Protocol system and this is undermined when States parties attempt to dictate when and where the Subcommittee might visit. It must be understood that, by ratifying the Optional Protocol, States parties have committed themselves as a matter of international legal obligation to allow the Subcommittee to determine the times and places of its visits. It is inevitable that the Subcommittee must view with suspicion the motives of any State that seeks to circumvent its freely assumed obligation to cooperate with the Subcommittee in the prevention of torture and ill-treatment, by frustrating its programme of work. The Subcommittee cannot and will not accept the legitimacy of interference in the performance of its Optional Protocol-mandated preventive work. 38. It is against this background that, during the reporting period, the Subcommittee decided to terminate one of its visits – to Rwanda – due to the fact that the Subcommittee could not undertake it, as mentioned in paragraph 11 above. On two previous occasions the Subcommittee had had to pause a visit in order to allow the States in question to address certain problems that were preventing it from conducting its visit properly. In both those previous instances, those problems were resolved and the visits were reactivated and successfully concluded. In the present instance, this did not prove possible. The Subcommittee greatly regrets this, but hopes that it will be able to undertake an effective and Optional Protocol-compliant visit to Rwanda in the near future. 8