  The direct pair-production of the superpartner of the $\tau$-lepton, the
$\widetilde{\tau}$, is one of the most interesting channels to search for SUSY
in. First of all, the $\widetilde{\tau}$ is likely to be the lightest of the
scalar leptons. Secondly the signature of $\widetilde{\tau}$ pair production
signal events is one of the experimentally most difficult ones, thereby
constituting the "worst" possible scenario for SUSY searches. The current
model-independent $\widetilde{\tau}$ limits comes from analyses performed at
LEP but they suffer from the limited energy of this facility. Limits obtained
at the LHC do extend to higher masses, but they are only valid under strong
assumptions. ILC, a future electron-positron collider with energy up to 500 GeV
and upgrade capability\footnote{The initial ILC energy is planned to be 250
GeV.}, is a promising facility for SUSY searches. The capability of the ILC for
determining exclusion/discovery limits for the $\widetilde{\tau}$ in a
model-independent way is shown in this paper, together with an overview of the
current state-of-the-art. Results of the last studies of $\widetilde{\tau}$
pair-production at the ILC are presented, showing the improvements with respect
to previous results.
