CAT/C/54/2 6. The Subcommittee membership changed during 2014.2 At the twenty-second session Margarete Osterfeld and Catherine Paulet succeeded to the places vacated by the resignations of Christian Pross and Olivier Obrecht the previous year. On 23 October 2014, at the fifth Meeting of States Parties to the Optional Protocol, 13 members were elected to fill the vacancies arising in respect of members whose terms of office expired on 31 December 2014. The terms of office of all the newly elected members will commence on 1 January 2015 and are for a period of four years, expiring on 31 December 2018. 7. The Bureau of the Subcommittee remained unchanged, its mandate running until the twenty-fifth session (February 2015). The Chairperson was Malcolm Evans. The ViceChairpersons were: Suzanne Jabbour, National Preventive Mechanisms; Aisha Shujune Muhammad, Jurisprudence and Subcommittee Rapporteur; Wilder Tayler Souto, Visits; and Fortuné Gaétan Zongo, External Relations. 8. The heads of three regional teams remain unchanged: Africa, Paul Lam Shang Leen; Asia and the Pacific, Lowell Goddard; and Europe, Mari Amos. At the twenty-third session, Enrique Font succeeded Judith Salgado Alvarez as the head of the Latin America Regional Team. The regional teams form a primary building block of the Subcommittee’s work, examining the implementation of the Optional Protocol in the States parties in their region. They report back to the Subcommittee plenary, proposing recommendations where desirable. The regional teams also make recommendations to the plenary regarding the visiting programme for the forthcoming year, ensuring that the programme of universal visiting is established in a reasoned and participative manner in accordance with impartially applied strategic operational criteria. 9. The Subcommittee’s permanent and ad hoc working groups met at each session during 2014. Further information on those meetings is provided in section IV below. 10. Those working methods reflect the Subcommittee’s preference for meeting in subgroups and working groups, which facilitate discussion of a broader range of issues, in more depth, with greater focus and in a more inclusive fashion than would otherwise be possible. C. Visits conducted during the reporting period 11. The Subcommittee carried out seven official visits in 2014. 12. Three visits were undertaken in accordance with its mandate under article 11 (a) of the Optional Protocol, to Nicaragua (7–16 May), Azerbaijan (8–14 September) and Togo (1–10 December). 13. Two visits were undertaken in accordance with its mandate under articles 11 (b) and 12 of the Optional Protocol, to Ecuador (1–4 September) and Malta (6–9 October). 14. One visit was undertaken in accordance with its mandate under article 13, paragraph 4, of the Optional Protocol, to Maldives (8–11 December). 15. For the first time, the Subcommittee undertook a new type of visit, namely, an “Optional Protocol advisory visit”, aimed at facilitating the full implementation of the Optional Protocol (see sect. IV.C below). That visit was to Nigeria (1–3 April 2014). 2 4 The list of members is available from www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/OPCAT/Pages/Membership.aspx.