A/HRC/28/63 41. From 29 September to 3 October 2014, he participated in the annual meeting of special procedures mandate holders organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Coordination Committee of Special Procedures. 42. On 24 October 2014, he held a meeting with the President and Commissioners of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and its Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights Defenders and Freedom of Expression to discuss with them possible avenues of cooperation. 43. On 10 November 2014, he attended a lecture organized by the German Institute for Human Rights and the organization Brot für die Welt on the role of human rights defenders and business. 44. He met the permanent representatives of various missions in Geneva to discuss matters relating to the exercise of his mandate. Together with his team, and other special procedures mandate holders, he held discussions on possible synergies and cooperation in the future. III. Strategic workplan 45. This section sets out the way in which the Special Rapporteur envisages implementing his mandate. It constitutes a road map for the activities that await him over the coming years. A. Detailed analysis of trends and problems 46. The Special Rapporteur notes that, like his predecessors, he will be able to carry out his basic task of protecting human rights defenders more effectively if he keeps up to date with friends and constants in this area. 47. In accordance with Council resolution 16/5, under which the Human Rights Council decided to study trends, developments and challenges in relation to the exercise of the right of anyone, acting individually or in association with others, to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, the Special Rapporteur began his time in office by holding a series of regional consultations, at which he met about 40 human rights defenders at a time, region by region, and undertook a detailed consideration with them of national and regional trends, the threats facing specific groups, the reprisals to which they are subject and the methods of protection developed over the past few years, in order to assess their relevance and to develop them either on a case-by-case basis or in a more systematic way. The first consultation was held in Tunis in October 2014, followed by a consultation in Tbilisi, Georgia, in November 2014 and another in Manila, Philippines, in December 2014. Consultations will be held in the Americas and Africa in the first half of 2015. 48. At these consultations, a systematic presentation is made of the mandate, its objectives, its working methods, the options open to human rights defenders and the possibilities provided by the mandate to protect them. 49. Such consultations provide an opportunity to bring together human rights defenders from a specific region working on various themes and topics and to share with them information on the human rights situation. In addition to the sharing of experiences and good practices, these consultations provide a unique opportunity to assess the effectiveness of protection mechanisms from the point of view of human rights defenders and to establish what they expect from the mandate. 8 GE.14-25280