A/HRC/38/44/Add.1 the preparation of case files so that formal investigations could proceed at a later date and formal accountability be delivered. 70. While the Government, including federal, regional and local officials, is ultimately responsible for transitional justice, a range of other actors can play a crucial role in ensuring these obligations are effectively and peacefully implemented. Religious and tribal leaders in particular must take stock of the transitional challenges, present and forthcoming, and respond accordingly, providing guidance to their members and followers, grounded in the foremost necessities of justice, reconciliation, peace and security. Almost three years ago, on 12 February 2015, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani issued a fatwa on “Advice and guidance to the fighters on the battlefields”, calling on all fighters to respect international humanitarian law principles. The new transitional phase demands of all religious leaders in Iraq that they exercise similar foresight and positive influence over the behaviour of all actors, at national and local level, and support reconciliation and transitional justice efforts. 71. A positive example of documenting atrocity crimes committed since 2014 is the Commission for Investigation and Gathering of Evidence of the Kurdistan Regional Government (see also para. 50 above). The Commission, headed by an investigative judge, has documented a multitude of crimes committed by ISIL, including mass killings, disappearances, sexual violence, enslavement, and use of child soldiers, through interviewing dozens of survivors and witnesses, excavating mass graves and conducting other forensic investigations. In doing so, they have been able to identify a range of perpetrators. However, the prosecution thereof will depend on the establishment of a proper legal framework integrating measures against international crimes within the domestic system of both the Federal and Regional Governments. 72. The United Nations Development Programme has also set up a project supporting reconciliation efforts in Iraq, which will include the establishment of a three-fold mechanism, including a citizens’ archive for gross human rights violations, with recommendations for follow-up. The project, to be implemented throughout the country in 2018 and 2019, will involve collecting and documenting victims and survivors’ testimonies about the violations they endured and witnessed. C. Certificates of absence50 73. During the most recent conflict, thousands of men, women and children from all communities have been forcibly disappeared, the vast majority of whom remain unaccounted for. Within the Yazidi community alone, an estimated 6,450 persons are missing with most feared killed and placed in unmarked individual or mass graves. In and around Fallujah, individual women interviewed by the Special Rapporteur have lost up to 15 male members of their immediate families, including their husband, sons and brothers, the youngest being 13 or 14 years old. Those left behind are facing extreme hardship as a result, including for having lost their main breadwinners. 74. The uncertainty about the fate of these persons causes relentless suffering to their relatives. Knowing what happened to the disappeared is critical for relatives, their communities and Iraq as a whole to be at peace. Getting to the truth will require concerted efforts in tracing the missing, which sadly will need to include the excavation of mass graves. 75. Other pressing needs related to the missing, include legal and financial needs. According to government officials, Iraqi law provides for something amounting to a “certificate of absence”, which is issued by a judge on the basis of a police report and valid for three years, after which a death certificate may be issued. Families also have the right to compensation or reparation for the disappearance of their relatives. 76. However, based on information received during the visit, it appears that these certificates may be withheld from families of disappeared suspected ISIL members, 50 16 The Government provided additional information (A/HRC/38/44/Add.4, sect. 16).