A/HRC/11/31 page 13 peacekeeping operations with a mandate to protect civilians (such as the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo); and humanitarian organizations, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ICRC, UNICEF and the protection clusters of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. 31. The question to be clarified was what protection meant in terms of approaches and activities. According to ICRC and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, protection denoted all activities aimed at ensuring equal access to and enjoyment by civilians in situations of armed conflict of their rights as human beings as embodied in international human rights instruments and international humanitarian law. This understanding of protection covered all categories of human rights, including action that prevented or put a stop to a specific pattern of abuse and/or alleviated its immediate effects, such as responsive measures, including protection through presence, advocacy and negotiations with relevant actors, triggering interventions at higher levels, and through public denunciation; protection activities aimed at restoring people’s dignity and at ensuring adequate living conditions through reparation, restitution and rehabilitation, including by providing access to justice, ending impunity, setting up mechanisms for restitution of property, as well as creating and running institutions for the rehabilitation of victims; and activities aimed at fostering an environment conducive to respect for the rights of individuals. It was agreed that protection activities aimed to prevent violations of human rights; to stop ongoing violations; to prevent the recurrence of violations; and to repair, restore, rehabilitate or compensate victims and their families when violations had taken place. 32. The issue of how certain monitoring and investigation mechanisms could contribute not only to establishing accountability for human rights and humanitarian law violations, but also help prevent such violations in the future was also discussed. While it was recognized that accountability mechanisms did not directly address prevention measures, they should not be seen in a vacuum. Instead, what was needed was a multipronged and multisectoral approach whereby measures for ongoing protection, rehabilitation and accountability were regarded as a package. The Human Rights Council and human rights treaty bodies had adjusted their mechanisms to respond to situations of armed conflict. For example, the Council had held special sessions to analyse the human rights situations in different parts of the world and had dispatched, on a number of occasions, fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry comprising of independent persons or building upon the specialist expertise of thematic special rapporteurs. It had also brought a number of thematic rapporteurs together to provide a joint assessment of the factual and legal responsibility of the parties to a conflict from their different perspectives. It was argued that the underlying rationale was presumably twofold: on the one hand, providing the Council and the international community with an independent and authoritative statement of what had occurred; on the other, a change of behaviour was sought by naming and shaming those allegedly responsible for human rights and humanitarian law violations. 33. Concerning fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry, it was argued that they had a mandate that was mainly oriented towards the victims and survivors of human rights abuses. They provided a forum for individuals to express themselves and to explain what had happened to them, even if not directly to the perpetrators. The process offered an opportunity to provide and make available a record of events and their consequences that had been carefully considered