A/HRC/28/69 204. Non-State armed groups have maimed and killed children in indiscriminate attacks in Damascus, Idlib, Dara’a, Hama and Homs, including in attacks targeting schools, taken children hostage and failed to protect children in their custody from harm. In a continuing trend, Jabhat Al-Nusra has continued to use and recruit children into their ranks for active combat roles. Acting in violation of international humanitarian law, the group has infringed the rights of children and disregarded their obligations to afford them necessary protections from harm and abuse. Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham 205. ISIS has continued to instrumentalise and abuse children on a massive scale. The violations documented have had acute physical and psychological repercussions for survivors and witnesses and have had destabilising effects on communities. 206. On 29 May, a convoy of buses transporting children home to Ayn al-Arab (Kobane) after writing their final school exams in Aleppo, was stopped by ISIS fighters. All male students, aged 13 and 14 years old, were removed and transported to Menbej, where they were taken to the Sharia Court and the Al-Fateh Mosque to spend the night. The following morning, the children were taken to a two-story school building 500 metres from the mosque and told that they would be detained there as hostages for a prisoner exchange with the YPG. In the course of their four month long detention, ISIS members and Shari’a teachers beat and mistreated the children as punishment for disobeying rules, such as being too loud or speaking Kurdish. In the most severe punishments for repeat offences or for trying to escape, ISIS gave boys electric shocks and suspended them by their wrists from the ceiling for several hours. 207. The children were subjected to religious education in an apparent attempt to indoctrinate them into ISIS’ ideology and to desensitise them to forms of violence employed by ISIS. This included forcing them to watch videos of beheadings. Following their release, the boys’ parents described the altered behaviour of their children and the concerns they had for their mental well-being in the long-term. This incident stands as a stark example of the manner in which ISIS utilises children to entrench their ideology into communities with a view to ensuring long-term loyalty. 208. ISIS has detained children and subjected them to the same treatment as adults. A 13year-old boy detained in an ISIS facility in (Aleppo) between March and October 2014, was accused of writing anti-ISIS graffiti and tortured as punishment. A co-detainee described the boy being taken away, blindfolded, hooded and tied up. He never returned to his cell. An 11-year-old boy who was arrested in Al-Bab and accused of fighting against ISIS, was executed in the same detention facility in 2014. 209. ISIS fighters have executed children accused of being members of opposing armed groups as well as those who broke the group’s edicts. In September, ISIS beheaded a 16year-old girl, who they accused of being an YPG member, in Shuyoukh, (Aleppo). On 5 September, a 16-year-old boy believed to have been a captured fighter from another armed group was executed in Al-Ashara, (Dayr az Zawr) and his body was displayed for days afterward. In early October, a male child was killed and his body placed on display in Minbeij (Aleppo). Children are often present in the crowds at the executions and cannot avoid seeing the publicly displayed corpses in the days that follow. One woman described closing her son’s eyes as they passed television screens in Raqqah city on which ISIS screened videos of its executions. 210. ISIS has also used children as executioners. Two Syrian Government soldiers captured at Tabqa airport were executed by a 16-year-old ISIS fighter in late August. On 13 January, ISIS released a video showing a child approximately 10 or 11 years old shooting two men accused of espionage. Children are trained to use weapons and to deploy as suicide bombers in “Cubs Camps”. One 14-year-old boy, who was trained in such camps in 52