Article 2. Obligation to Prevent Torture 73 the struggle against torture’ and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, creates a number of specific additional State obligations aimed at preventing and punishing torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. During the drafting process, the drafters decided to make a distinction between torture on the one hand, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment on the other. Article 16 requires States parties to prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and refers to a number of specific obligations in other articles of the Convention which shall equally apply to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Article 2(1) constitutes the corresponding umbrella clause in respect of torture as defined in Article 1. 2  According to Article 2, States parties shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial, and other measures to prevent torture in any territory under their jurisdiction, ie also on board ships and aircraft, in occupied, and other territories under their jurisdiction. In addition to the preventive obligations explicitly enlisted in the Convention, such as the prohibition of refoulement (Article 3), the obligations relating to the criminal prosecution of perpetrators of torture (Articles 4 to 9), the obligation to provide education and training to law enforcement and other personnel (Article 10), to systematically review interrogation methods and conditions of detention (Article 11), to investigate ex officio possible acts of torture (Article 12), and any torture allegations (Article 13), and the prohibition of invoking evidence extracted by torture in any proceedings (Article 15), the umbrella clause in Article 2(1) requires States parties also to take other effective measures aimed at preventing torture. Such measures relate primarily to guarantees in the context of the right to personal liberty and the right to a fair trial. 3  The comprehensive State obligations deriving from Article 2(1) are subject to international monitoring by the CAT Committee in all relevant procedures. In addition to the State reporting and inquiry procedure, individual applicants can also invoke violations of this provision in the individual complaints procedure under Article 22 CAT. If applicants claim that they have been subjected to torture in the past, the Committee concludes that the respective State party has failed to take effective measures to prevent torture and, therefore, finds a violation of Article 2(1) in conjunction with Article 1. If the treatment amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the Committee finds a violation of Article 16. But the Committee can also find violations of Article 2(1) in conjunction with other State obligations, such as the obligation in Article 4 to punish perpetrators of torture with appropriate penalties. 4  Article 2(2) confirms that the prohibition of torture is one of the few absolute and non-​derogable human rights. No State may invoke any exceptional circumstances, such as war or terrorism, as a justification of torture. This provision, therefore, provides a clear answer to all attempts aimed at undermining the absolute prohibition of torture for the sake of national security in combating global terrorism, such as the ‘ticking bomb scenario’ or special interrogation methods in the framework of counterterrorism strategies. 5  Finally, Article 2(3) prohibits in criminal proceedings against torturers any defence of obedience to superior orders by any civil or military authority. Domestic laws providing for such a defence therefore violate Article 2(3). But this provision does not exclude criminal courts from applying mitigating circumstances if a perpetrator of torture was forced by a superior order to apply torture.1 1   CAT, ‘General Comment No 2 on the Implementation of Article 2 by States Parties’ (2008) UN Doc CAT/​C/​GC/​2. Zach