A/HRC/14/24 29. As of March 2010, the following requests to visit remain outstanding: Bangladesh; Canada; Chad; China; Dominican Republic; Egypt; El Salvador; Ethiopia; Georgia; Guinea; India; Indonesia; Iran (Islamic Republic of); Israel; Kyrgyzstan; Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Mozambique; Myanmar; Nepal; Pakistan; Peru; Russian Federation; Saudi Arabia; South Africa; Thailand; Togo; Trinidad and Tobago; Turkmenistan; Uganda; United Republic of Tanzania; Uzbekistan; Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of); Viet Nam; and Yemen. III. Review of issues addressed and research undertaken 30. The situations dealt with by this mandate often involve complex factual, policy and legal issues. In addition to generating pressure for change, I have attached considerable importance to specifying and clarifying the applicable international legal framework. 31. The many themes addressed in-depth over six years have been approached in different ways, but especially the following: (a) Empirical surveys. World-wide surveys of a particular type of killing or accountability mechanism (for example electoral killings; killings of “witches”; vigilante killings; targeted killings; the use of commissions of inquiry); (b) Policy and best practices analyses. Various reports have examined best practices in order to assist civil society and Governments with complex legal and policy issues, and to bring greater specificity into my own recommendations. Such studies have focused on witness protection, military justice and police accountability; (c) Legal analysis. Other reports have focused on contested or unclear areas of law, such as the relationship between human rights and humanitarian law, the circumstances in which the application of the death penalty is unlawful, and the legality of targeted killings. 32. The disparate issues arising under the mandate can usefully be understood thematically.7 In what follows, I outline the general issues encountered by the mandate, and the contributions made with respect to each.8 A. Killings by law enforcement officials or other security forces 33. Killings by police and other law enforcement or security officials are frequently encountered within the mandate. They can take many forms. All too common are intentional murders in which police shoot to kill alleged criminals without resort to other appropriate measures. Instances of this approach are detailed in my reports on Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya and Nigeria. Some of the killings are carried out by individual police, others are killed by unacknowledged police “death squads”. Another major problem is the use of excessive force while arresting a suspect, or of indiscriminate force in a riot-control context. Such killings are often due to poor training, inappropriate “use of force” regulations and resource deficiencies. In countries where the security forces may be directly controlled by politicians, security officials may conduct politically motivated killings, 7 8 8 As the mandate develops over time, these categories will no doubt expand or be restructured, but I have found the categories described in this section useful as a working structure for understanding the issues the mandate addresses. The full text of all contributions of the Special Rapporteur has been organized thematically, and is available as a handbook from the website www.extrajudicialexecutions.org.