A/HRC/31/19 Special Representative also participated in the twelfth sectoral meeting between the United Nations and the League, held in Cairo in October 2015, on the theme “The repercussions of undermining human rights: towards a comprehensive cooperation approach”. 55. The Special Representative continued to strengthen the partnership with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to support the ongoing mainstreaming of issues related to children and armed conflict. With that aim, her Office participated in a workshop in April 2015 that focused on using practical field experience to design training courses on the issue of children and armed conflict for current and future NATO deployments. 56. Lastly, in relation to the European Union, on 12 February 2015 the Special Representative and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, renewed their commitment to work together in a joint statement on ending the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict. Collaboration is ongoing to support the mainstreaming of children and armed conflict into European Union policies and activities. VI. Progress in achieving accountability for violations of children’s rights 57. Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls for promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. As the Human Rights Council noted in its resolution 30/1, justice and accountability comes in many forms, including individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform and the vetting of public employees and officials. All these measures can ensure justice, provide victims with remedies, promote healing and reconciliation, inspire confidence in the institutions of the State and promote the rule of law. Justice and accountability are vitally important to provide protection to children during armed conflicts by ensuring that violations are not repeated, to repair the damage to victims and, ultimately, to end the cycle of conflict. Accountability should therefore be the key consideration in the response to violations against children. However, as the Special Representative outlined in her report to the Council in 2014, perpetrators of grave violations of child rights are rarely brought to justice (see A/HRC/28/54, para. 51). 58. In a positive development related to promoting accountability, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2225 (2015) in June 2015, in which it expressed grave concern over the abduction of children in situations of armed conflict. The Council requested the Secretary-General to include in the annexes to his future reports on children and armed conflict those parties to armed conflict that engage, in contravention of applicable international law, in patterns of abduction of children in situations of armed conflict. 59. The Special Representative used various platforms to reinforce her call for accountability, including in the keynote address she gave in the context of the Law, Justice and Development Week organized by the World Bank in November 2015. The Special Representative participated in a round table on accountability for sexual and gender-based crimes convened by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in Johannesburg, South Africa, in May 2015. Moreover, the Special Representative advocated for the inclusion of grave violations against children as criteria criterion for the application of sanctions and engaged with Security Council sanctions committees on a number of country situations. In 2015, she briefed committees concerning the situation in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Yemen. 15

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