A/HRC/31/3 committed itself to making resources available. Those summits showed the international community’s ability to come together to identify solutions to global problems and illustrated that human rights are widely recognized as constituting a pillar of sustainable development. 5. At the same time, human rights violations continued unabated. A growing number of conflicts and situations of violence, often resulting from deep-rooted discrimination, longstanding patterns of exclusion and lack of freedoms, continued to haunt many parts of the world. In many places across the planet, racism and hate speech were on the rise, often finding their way into politics. 6. In 2015, new mandates from intergovernmental bodies called for OHCHR to monitor, investigate, report and increase technical assistance, while intensified engagement with United Nations system partners in the security, development and humanitarian fields, in particular those arising from the Human Rights Up Front initiative required additional efforts. Those demands, in a context of complex human rights challenges, underscore the need to increase OHCHR resources so that the Office can adequately fulfil its mandate. A. Strengthening international human rights mechanisms 7. The work of human rights mechanisms and OHCHR, both at headquarters and in the field, contributed to prevention, early warning and protection efforts. Ways to extend the normative framework so as to enhance protection continued to be explored. 8. Despite persisting resource constraints, OHCHR provided support to all mechanisms and sought to intensify cooperation among them. Through the compilation of global indicators and world maps, OHCHR contributed to making information on States’ commitments and cooperation with international human rights mechanisms more accessible.3 The human rights indicators methodology developed by OHCHR, in collaboration with international human rights mechanisms, was increasingly recognized as an essential tool and a good practice in the implementation of recommendations of human rights mechanisms. OHCHR conducted training on indicators for national stakeholders in many countries, including in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Tunisia. 1. Treaty bodies 9. In 2015, benefiting from the additional meeting time allowed under General Assembly resolution 68/268, OHCHR facilitated the review by treaty bodies of 173 State party reports, the adoption of views and decisions on more than 160 individual communications and eight country visits by the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Consequently, most committees reduced their reporting backlogs. The simplified reporting procedure was also adopted by all committees. 10. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted its first views on an individual communication and the Committee on the Rights of the Child received its first complaints under its communications procedure. 11. The number of registered individual communications increased from 170 in 2013 to 250 in 2015, while the number of requests registered under the urgent action procedure of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced 3 2 See http://indicators.ohchr.org.