A/HRC/43/51/Add.3 Introduction 1. The present document is submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, to the Human Rights Council, pursuant to resolution 25/18 of the Human Rights Council. The report provides observations on the communications on specific cases addressed by the Special Rapporteur to States and other actors, as well as observations on the replies received from States and other actors. 2. The cases and situations raised by the Special Rapporteur in this report include urgent appeals, allegation letters and other letters, issued between 1 December 2018 and 30 November 2019. The press releases included in this report are the ones issued between 1 December 2018 and 31 January 2020. 3. The report contains responses received from States before 31 January 2020. A small number of replies received before 31 January 2020 could not be included because translation of these documents was not available at the time of finalising the report. In mid-October 2019, United Nations was forced to take extraordinary measures to curtail expenditures in order to address the liquidity crisis faced by the Organisation. This caused delays in translation of 24 government replies received in languages other than English. Consequently, these replies will be made public at a later stage to ensure the required protection measures related to victims or potential victims, as well as to any alleged perpetrators mentioned in these replies. 4. For ease of reference, cases have been grouped by region, with countries within each region listed alphabetically according to their names in English. Each communication is referenced in one of six categories: urgent appeal (UA), allegation letter (AL), other letter (OL), joint urgent appeal (JUA), joint allegation letter (JAL) and joint other letter (JOL). This is followed by the date the communication was issued, as well as the case number and the date of the State’s reply. The communications included in this report and the replies received from the concerned States, respectively, can be consulted on the following webpage: https://spcommreports.ohchr.org. In bold, is a short reference to the allegations contained in the communication in the language of submission. Press releases published during the reporting period are referenced below the communications, with a hyperlink to the statement as uploaded on the OHCHR website. In bold, is the title of the press release in the language of the statement. 5. The Special Rapporteur is grateful to all States, which have transmitted substantive responses to his communications. He considers response to his communications as an important part of cooperation by States with his mandate. He trusts that States who have not provided substantive responses to his communications will do so shortly. 6. The annex of the report contains information on the communications procedure and guidelines on the submission of complaints to the Special Rapporteur. Summary 7. Between 1 December 2018 and 30 November 2019, the Special Rapporteur sent 255 communications individually or jointly with other mandate holders of the Human Rights Council, to 100 States and 16 other actors. Of these communications, 59 were urgent appeals and 145 were allegation letters. 8. The Special Rapporteur drew attention to the situation of over 535 people, of whom 160 were registered as women. The report also includes 98 cases consisting of follow-ups on persons, organisations and normative frameworks, which were previously the subject of communications, including press releases. 9. Examined by region, the figures show that 70 communications were addressed to 19 countries in the Asia-Pacific region (27 %); 74 were addressed to 34 countries in the Americas region (29 %); 32 to 19 countries in Europe and Central Asia (13 %); 38 to 12 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (15 %); 26 were addressed to 16 countries in Africa (10 %) and 16 to other actors (6 %). 6