A/HRC/31/19 I. Introduction 1. The present report covers the period from December 2014 to December 2015 and is submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 69/157, in which the Assembly requested the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict to submit a report to the Human Rights Council on the activities undertaken in fulfilment of her mandate, including information on her field visits and on the progress achieved and the challenges remaining on the children and armed conflict agenda. II. Progress and challenges in addressing grave violations against children in armed conflict 2. During the reporting period, children in conflict zones worldwide continued to face violations of their human rights. Much of the Middle East and North Africa was in the grip of, or affected by overspill from, increasingly complex and widening conflicts. In Africa and Asia, many protracted and relapsing conflicts showed no signs of abating. In all of those situations, many parties to conflict failed to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. As the Human Rights Council has noted in recent resolutions, disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks have been committed against civilians, including children, and civilian infrastructure such as medical facilities and schools. 3. The effect of armed conflict on children during the reporting period was unyielding, with the Central African Republic, Israel and the State of Palestine, Libya, South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen serving as regrettable examples where the situation worsened to a significant degree or saw no improvement. In the Central African Republic, a breakdown in law and order led to more intense violence between armed groups and the large-scale forced displacement of children, particularly since September. Nearly 2,000 children have been separated from armed groups by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners in the Central African Republic in 2015. These children are now at risk of being re-recruited owing to the persistent instability and lack of appropriate reintegration programmes. In South Sudan, witnesses and survivors of government offensives between May and August 2015 gave horrifying accounts of children being thrown into burning houses, run over by military vehicles and hanged from trees, and of girls being killed if they resisted rape. In several instances, boys were reportedly found castrated and killed after attacks. In Yemen, heavy aerial bombardments and ground operations since the end of March 2015 have dramatically increased the number of child casualties and had a devastating impact on access to education in an already highly precarious environment. Nearly all parties to the conflict on the ground in Yemen have engaged in widespread child recruitment, with information indicating that four times as many children were recruited in the six-month period from March to September 2015 than in the whole of 2014. In the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq, the increasingly complex conflict and persistent violations of international law are taking an ever-increasing toll on the civilian population, as evidenced by rising displacement and refugee outflows. Libya is also facing worsening instability, violence and localized conflicts, and the rising tensions and violence in the State of Palestine and Israel show no signs of abating at the end of the reporting period. 4. Extreme violence was a prevalent feature of the conflicts taking place in 2015 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria and the Syrian Arab Republic. Children were disproportionately affected and were often the direct targets of acts of violence intended to cause maximum civilian casualties and terrorize entire communities. Groups perpetrating extreme violence 3