A/HRC/42/51 D. Gendered harms 89. Syrian women, men, girls and boys have witnessed myriad conflict-related violations, including indiscriminate attacks, unlawful siege warfare, widespread detention and disappearances, in addition to the destruction of key civilian infrastructure, attacks on residences and food supplies. Gender roles, and the inequalities that underpin them, have fuelled and amplified the impact of these violations, inflicting multifaceted harms upon survivors, thereby shaping differently their negative experiences. For example, although gendered harms clearly encompass physical and bodily harm, they often also encompass unacknowledged harm, including distinctive socioeconomic and moral harms, which impact negatively the exercise of a broad range of human rights. 90. Large-scale offensives carried out by all parties affected the continuation of service provision and further impacted civilian infrastructure, often rendering it non-operational without the possibility of repair. In Idlib, access to agricultural lands for women, and in particular those female-headed households in need of securing a sustainable livelihood, has been severely affected following fires that burned tens of thousands of crops and wheat fields. With numerous medical facilities being damaged or completely destroyed by hostilities, many women were forced to give birth in olive fields without the necessary prenatal and postnatal assistance. While services were gradually restored in certain areas in eastern Ghutah, in others they remained largely inexistent. Compounded by the fragile economic situation and the general absence of the rule of law and of protection mechanisms, increased intimate partner violence, especially in Idlib, intensified during the period under review and contributed to rampant child marriage, in particular in eastern Ghutah, to alleviate financial burdens. Interviewees, many of them widows who had lost their spouses as a result of the war, consistently explained that, by doing so, they protected their daughters’ “honour” and, by extension, the reputation of the family. A 12-year-old-girl with physical disabilities was married off in Duma for similar reasons. 91. During the period under review, rape and other forms of sexual violence continued to occur. Sexual violence has played a prominent role in the conflict, owing to the fear and threat of rape and the violence committed.29 The Commission is currently reviewing reports of rape and sexual violence against women, including returnees, men and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex civilians that have allegedly been perpetrated in government-controlled areas. Investigations are ongoing. 92. Gendered harms also manifest themselves in the exercise of key rights. In the Syrian Arab Republic, female-headed households have been rapidly increasing as a result of the widespread and systematic arrest and disappearance of men and boys above the age of 15 years by pro-government forces, primarily government forces. 30 The death of many of those men and boys went undocumented, leaving family members unable to access any documentation proving the death of their loved ones. Without an official death certificate, women were unable to move forward with the legal aspects of the deaths, which, in turn, impeded inheritance and custody rights and severely restricted freedom of movement, in particular of travel abroad with minor children. Syrian women described that, in order to secure these rights, many were forced to pronounce their spouses dead after four years, or claim abandonment after one year.31 93. Syrian women, moreover, faced difficulties in registering their children. As Syrian nationality is conferred to a child through his or her Syrian father, 32 Syrian women encountered obstacles when proceeding administratively with civil registration in the 29 30 31 32 See conference room paper “‘I lost my dignity’: sexual and gender-based violence in the Syrian Arab Republic” (A/HRC/37/CRP.3). Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/Documentation.aspx. See, e.g., the Commission’s “Death notifications in the Syrian Arab Republic”, 27 November 2018; and also the conference room paper (A/HRC/31/CRP.1) “Out of sight, out of mind: deaths in detention in the Syrian Arab Republic”. Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/Documentation.aspx. See Syrian Law of Personal Status, arts. 109 and 205 (2). See Legislative Decree No. 276, art. 3. 17