A/HRC/38/31 the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as at 30 August 2017, 1,220 boys and 658 girls had been recruited and used by the Kamuina Nsapu militia. However, the team believes the numbers are in fact much higher and the recruitment is ongoing. Many children have been abducted, wounded, mutilated, detained or executed. Some have seen their parents beheaded or beaten, or their mothers raped. Many of them have been forced to fight on the front line without weapons or with dummy weapons, knives or, occasionally, traditional rifles. They have been forced to kill and decapitate bodies. The physical and psychological trauma and stigmatization suffered by these children will require long-term care. This massive use of children belonging to the same ethnic group has multiple consequences for their community and creates a climate of suspicion towards them, which can generate extreme reactions. 94. UNICEF estimates that, since the beginning of the crisis in Kasaï, 416 schools and 224 health centres have been looted or destroyed. Schools and other educational establishments were prime targets of the Kamuina Nsapu militia. 95. A significant number of victims of sexual violence, mainly rape, have described the difficulties that they have faced. In addition to the medical and psychological problems they suffer, survivors are also ostracized by their families and communities owing to the weight given to tradition and the resulting economic and social challenges. Many women have been raped in front of their husbands, children or other family members. It is therefore the entire social fabric of Kasaï that is suffering the consequences of this sexual violence. Most rape victims are reluctant to report their ordeal for fear of stigmatization and owing to a general feeling of mistrust towards the justice system and a lack of effective reparation. IX. Legal characterization 96. The acts of violence committed against civilians are violations of human rights and international humanitarian law that constitute international crimes. A. Crimes against humanity 97. Article 7 (1) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. “Attack directed against any civilian population” means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack. The adjective “widespread” connotes the large-scale nature of the attack and the existence of a certain number of victims, whereas the adjective “systematic” refers to the organized nature of the acts of violence and improbability of their random occurrence. The presence of combatants among the civilian population does not deprive this population of its civilian status. 98. The attacks perpetrated by the defence and security forces, the Kamuina Nsapu militia and the Bana Mura militias as described in the preceding sections were carried out against civilian populations in a widespread and systematic manner, pursuant to a State or organizational policy to commit such an attack. These attacks thus constitute crimes against humanity, including murder, rape or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity, enslavement, including for sexual slavery, persecution and other inhuman acts. B. War crimes 99. Under article 8 (2) (c) and (e) of the Rome Statute, war crimes are defined, in the case of an armed conflict not of an international character, as serious violations of article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 against persons taking no active part in the hostilities, and other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in armed conflicts. 16 GE.18-10936