A/HRC/37/72 law, to protect civilians, the infrastructure that facilitates civilian life and livelihoods or specially protected sites that form the backbone of their communities. Humanitarian aid has been instrumentalized as a weapon of war with siege warfare and denial of life-giving assistance used to compel civilian communities and parties to the conflict alike to surrender or starve. 11. As a Commission of inquiry, the primary tasks of the commissioners have been to document all serious human rights violations and war crimes, expose those responsible, seek to bring perpetrators to account for their crimes and help the victims to achieve justice. Efforts to promote criminal accountability through the International Criminal Court have not been successful so far, despite the best efforts of the Human Rights Council, the Commission, a large number of Member States committed to the promotion of international justice and countless civil society groups. Attempts to refer the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic to the International Criminal Court have never made it past the floor of the Security Council. More success may be achieved through recourse to universal jurisdiction and we welcome the fact that the number of such cases before a variety of national jurisdictions is on the rise. 12. Additionally, Member States in the General Assembly adopted resolution 71/248 in December 2016 aimed at promoting criminal accountability in a novel manner by establishing the International Impartial and Independent International Mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of the most serious international crimes committed during the armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. This is to be done with a view to compiling case files to facilitate proceedings in both international and national jurisdictions willing to prosecute perpetrators of the atrocious crimes that have been committed during the war in the Syrian Arab Republic. The Commission welcomes this initiative as a step forward in promoting accountability and will work closely to assist the mechanism in achieving this goal. 13. On the question of helping victims obtain justice, the Commission intends to pursue this task vigorously in the coming year in the light of the evolving situation on the ground in the Syrian Arab Republic and the various ongoing efforts to bring the parties to the conflict to the negotiating table. Those developments provide new challenges, but also opportunities to pursue justice for victims. They will require, however, an affirmation by all concerned that victims’ demands for justice and accountability are a central component of any negotiated settlement and in any durable peace solution, and that there can be no tradeoff between this goal and a political solution. 14. The Commission is obliged to prioritize the justice-based needs and demands of the Syrian people, civilians who have been trapped or held hostage in this mindless conflict and who have suffered appalling deprivation and injustice. As such, the Commission will seek to utilize the accumulated knowledge, expertise and verification processes gained over the past six years to help victims achieve the justice that has eluded them so far. 15. In the present report, the Commission stresses the need to find practical remedies to the violations that it continues to document that go beyond a call for criminal justice and to seek solutions that could be implemented in the immediate future to build confidence among the parties negotiating a political solution or used as factors in initiatives by the international community to reinforce efforts to build a tangible process for sustainable peace. In both cases, placing the needs of victims at the front and centre of initiatives and negotiations is imperative. 16. The Commission wishes to remind the parties to the conflict and their sponsors, the facilitators of the peace talks and the international community that the serious violations committed since the beginning of the conflict need to be addressed as part of any process aimed at ending the conflict and achieving sustainable peace. 17. Accordingly, the Commission wishes to propose to the Human Rights Council the following principles and initiatives to be adhered to in all efforts aimed at bringing an end to the conflict. They may also be used as benchmarks or reminders over the coming year of what can be implemented immediately as part of confidence-building measures, what needs to be done immediately upon any cessation of hostilities, and what mechanisms need to be 4