A/HRC/43/CRP.6 have also arbitrarily detained children as hostages, often along with their mothers, to extract ransom, or to initiate prisoner swaps with Government Forces and affiliated militias. Children reportedly have been detained by Jabhat Al-Nusra and tortured in Harim prison (Idlib). One 14-year-old boy interviewed by the Commission described how he had been tortured by Ahrar al-Sham in ar-Raqqah in July 2013 in an attempt to extract information about his uncle. The body of a 16 year-old-boy, severely tortured, was returned to his parents in Saraqeb in 2012, after being detained at a checkpoint by Jabhat al-Nusra. 57. As SDF gained control over the last ISIL strongholds in eastern Syria, women and children with familial links to ISIL were transferred to SDF-run al-Hol, al-Roj and Ain-Issa camps in eastern Syria, where, at the time of writing, they persist in deplorable living conditions. Men and boys as young as 12 years of age with perceived links to ISIL militants, likely including Yazidi boys forcibly transferred into Syria in 2014, were separated from women and younger children and transferred to SDF-managed detention sites. Most men and boys remained in SDF-run detention facilities, without adequate judicial guarantees in a legal and administrative limbo, conducive to detainee abuse. 58. Throughout 2018 and 2019, the Commission documented numerous cases of abduction of children in the Afrin region. The lack of an effective security apparatus and clear absence of the rule of law in the region resulted in frequent abductions by armed groups and criminal gangs, who also targeted children.42 E. Sexual violence against children “The officer took two girls, held their faces down on the desk, and raped them in turn. The girls tried to resist but there was nothing they could do. The officer then told me “you see what I am doing to them, I will do this to your wife and daughter.” Male detainee, Damascus Political Security Branch, 2014 59. Parties to the conflict resorted to sexual violence as a tool to instil fear, humiliate and punish or, in the case of terrorist groups, as part of their enforced social order.43 Underreporting or delayed reporting of these flagrant violations is prevalent, thus seriously impacting an assessment of its full magnitude. Government forces and associated militia 60. Women and girls have been targeted on the basis of their gender since the early days of the Syrian conflict. Rape and sexual violence have been committed against women and girls during house raids often following ground offensives, at checkpoints and, most often, in State custody. Women and girls were raped and sexually assaulted in Government detention facilities, with interviewees consistently reporting that such violations occurred in the investigation branches of the Military Intelligence Directorate and other places of detention administered by the General Security Directorate in Damascus. 61. Girls in detention were subjected to sexual and gender-based violence to extract information, coerce confession or force the surrender of opposition family members. In 2013 in Dar’a, for example, a young student was raped at a checkpoint because her brother was an opposition fighter. Later, the FSA arranged for her to marry someone in order to “protect her honour”. In another case, the nine-year-old daughter of a man suspected to be a member of an armed group was raped after being arrested by Government forces along with all of her relatives. 62. Boys in detention have been particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. Sexual torture, including the tying of genitals, has been systematically perpetrated against men and boys in detention in Damascus, Homs and Aleppo. For example, in January 2013, security forces beat and electrocuted the genitals of a 17-year-old boy detained at a place of detention run 42 43 See A/HRC/40/70 paras. 64 – 66 and A/HRC/42/51 para. 59. See “I lost my dignity’: sexual and gender-based violence in the Syrian Arab Republic”, conference room paper A/HRC/37/CRP.3 15