A/HRC/4/41 page 13 from 19 to 21 September. The mission fulfilled part of a request by the Working Group to conduct a regional visit to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, countries with significant numbers of cases that have been outstanding for many years. The delegation met with numerous high-ranking public officials, as well as with NGOs and families of the disappeared. 41. The report of the country visit to Guatemala is contained in an addendum to this report. It contains an overview of the constitutional and legal framework on disappearances. It reviews the institutional steps the country has taken to address disappearances and the measures adopted to guarantee victims’ rights under the Declaration. It examines the gap between the advanced legal framework and clear expressions of political will on the part of the Government and the lack of significant results. The Working Group makes specific recommendations to the Government, including a request for information providing for the clarification of the more than 2,000 cases of disappeared persons still pending with the Working Group. 42. The Working Group has requested visits to Algeria, Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nepal, Nicaragua, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, the Sudan and Timor-Leste. The Working Group will visit Argentina in March 2007, immediately after holding its eighty-first session in Buenos Aires. A mission to El Salvador and Honduras has been confirmed for February 2007, and the Working Group is still awaiting a reply to its request for a visit to Nicaragua. The Russian Federation has agreed in principle to a country visit and the Working Group has proposed that it take place in September 2007. The Government of Sri Lanka stated that it would not be possible to schedule a visit by the Working Group in early 2007 because other special rapporteurs would be visiting the country at that time, but that it had taken note of the Working Group’s request. The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran agreed to a visit by the Working Group in 2005, which was delayed at the request of the Government. Regretfully, the Government of Algeria has not responded to repeated interest expressed by the Working Group in visiting the country. D. Participation in the intersessional working group on a draft legally binding normative instrument for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance 43. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances participated in all the meetings of the intersessional working group to draft a legally binding normative instrument for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance. The Working Group supported the approval of the draft international convention for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance by the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. E. Statements and studies 44. For the report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly at its sixty-first session (A/61/289) on the question of enforced or involuntary disappearances, the Working Group prepared a submission which identified obstacles to the realization of the provisions of the Declaration and recommended various ways of overcoming those obstacles.