A/HRC/31/55 Governments on communications issued during the period of 1 December 2014 and 30 November 2015. 8. In 2015, the Special Rapporteur continued to speak out publicly to draw the attention of States and the international community to the situation of human rights defenders. He issued more than 40 public statements on the situation of defenders in 30 countries, many with other mandate holders.1 B. Country visits 9. Since assuming his mandate in June 2014, the Special Rapporteur has paid an official visit to Burundi in November 2014 (see A/HRC/31/55/Add.2). 10. The Special Rapporteur has outstanding visit requests to 17 States, including several that are long-standing (to Bahrain, Belarus, China, Jamaica, Maldives, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) and Viet Nam).2 He regrets that several other States (Azerbaijan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) have not yet communicated specific dates for a visit, despite their general commitment to it. 11. The Special Rapporteur alsoregrets that the Governments of Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines have failed to confirm, on numerous occasions, their acceptance of specific dates for country visit in 2015 or 2016, despite the many exchanges in that regard. Nonetheless, the Special Rapporteur intends to follow through on his requests in 2016, and hopes that the States concerned will give due attention and respond positively. 12. The Special Rapporteur is aware of the workload that such visits impose on the authorities of the States visited; he therefore wishes to thank the Governments that have issued an invitation or agreed to receive a visit. In that context, he notes with satisfaction the acceptance by the Government of Hungary of his request to visit the country from 8 to 16 February 2016. C. Cooperation with international, regional and national partners 13. The Special Rapporteur underlines the importance of cooperation with stakeholders on the international, regional and national levels, and therefore provides an overview of activities undertaken since his previous report to the General Assembly (see A/70/217, paras. 15-27), from 1 August to the end of December 2015. 14. From 25 to 28 August 2015, the Special Rapporteur participated in the twentieth annual meeting and the third Biennial Conference of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, held in Ulaanbaatar. He also took part in the concurrent Regional Conference of the Asian NGO Network on National Human Rights Institutions (ANNI), organized by FORUM-ASIA in Ulaanbaatar. 15. From 1 to 3 September, the Special Rapporteur was in Caracas to take part in an academic event on human rights defenders, organized by the Andrés Bello Catholic University. 1 2 4 The public statements made by the Special Rapporteur are available from the media centre of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents. More information on country visits by the Special Rapporteur and other mandate-holders is available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/CountryandothervisitsSP.aspx.