A/HRC/11/31 page 16 regional human rights courts, human rights treaty bodies and other quasijudicial mechanisms, as well as the Council’s own mechanisms, the right to justice and reparation of victims of violations of international humanitarian law beyond what constituted international crimes did not have equivalent international mechanisms. Some pointed out that the problem seemed to be more political than legal, because it was difficult for some States to accept to hold parties to a conflict accountable for violations of humanitarian law. 42. It was argued that there were two options to address the above issue. First, to create, instead of ad hoc commissions of inquiry, a permanent commission of inquiry with a mandate to investigate violations of international humanitarian law. It was also pointed out that the international fact-finding commission established by article 90 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions had the potential to fulfil this task. Owing to the dual consent required by article 90, the commission had never functioned since its creation. As a result of the absence of adequate mechanisms of accountability for international humanitarian law, the Security Council decided to create ad hoc tribunals to ensure that crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in the contexts of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda were duly investigated and those responsible prosecuted. It was pointed out that these existing international criminal law mechanisms and human rights monitoring and fact-finding mechanisms did not have compulsory jurisdiction. What was required were mechanisms that could ensure protection when potential violations could take place, namely, the means to prevent and mechanisms of early warning of potential human rights and humanitarian law violations. The second option was to encourage the existing international human rights machinery to look into violations of both human rights and international humanitarian law. It was recalled that the Inter-American and the European human rights systems, as well as the Human Rights Committee, had already started using the international humanitarian law framework to interpret their respective human rights law framework. Such a course of action could require judges and human rights experts to be given adequate training to be able to interpret and apply the correct rules of human rights and/or humanitarian law to a specific situation. It was also considered that these mechanisms did not have a specific mandate to apply international humanitarian law, which explained why regional human rights courts sometimes had difficulty in reconciling obligations under both bodies of law. 43. It was recalled that, in 2003, ICRC held a regional expert seminar on improving compliance with international humanitarian law. The report on the seminar highlighted different options to tackle gaps in compliance. The experts participating in the seminar were of the opinion that the obstacles to the establishment of accountability mechanisms were mainly posed by lack of political will rather than by legal considerations. V. FINAL REMARKS 44. In sum, the experts explored in detail the position already affirmed, inter alia, by the International Court of Justice and by the human rights treaty bodies regarding the complementary application of international human rights and international humanitarian law to situations of armed conflict as two interrelated and mutually reinforcing bodies of law. It was pointed out that, in the era of global media, the spread of information had allowed for these violations to reach the public opinion, which had put significant pressure on States to act to end them.