A/HRC/40/49 incidents during 2017. Attacks on schools or threats of attacks on schools and generalized violence led to widespread school closures throughout 2018 in Afghanistan, depriving over 140,000 girls and boys of their right to education. Schools were targeted as reprisals against the Government and international action, and for their function as voter registration and polling centres for the parliamentary elections held in October 2018. Widespread school closures were also prevalent in Mali, in particular in the central and northern regions. The closures were due, among other reasons, to general insecurity, attacks on schools, attacks or threats of attack against protected personnel by armed groups, including demands that strict religious ideology be followed, and orders to close many secular educational facilities. Attacks and threats of attack on and intimidation of schools and protected personnel by armed groups aiming to impose religious ideology and practices on schools were also reported in Somalia and Nigeria. In both countries, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, respectively, continued to abduct children from schools, including for recruitment and use purposes. Cases of attacks on schools and of their military use were also verified by the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic. 6. Violations including a cross-border dimension remained a prevalent feature of the reporting period, thereby further increasing the complexity of both prevention and response efforts. Recruitment and use and abduction were the two grave violations against children with the most pronounced cross-border implications, as children were recruited or abducted by parties to conflict in one country and trafficked to other countries to be used in combat, or for rape and other forms of sexual exploitation. 7. In her report, the Special Representative provides details about two specific protection challenges that continued to affect children during the reporting period, including the question of ending and preventing child abduction by parties to conflict and the issue of children who accompanied or were recruited and used as foreign fighters in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic. Notwithstanding the high level of violations against children and continued protection challenges, important progress was achieved in protecting children through sustained engagement with parties to conflict. That progress can be leveraged by shedding light on and garnering support for other factors influencing the impact of armed conflict on children, such as reintegration support for children formerly associated with armed forces and groups. A. Abduction of children in situations of armed conflict 8. While child abduction is not a new feature of conflicts, it has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Abduction is often a precursor to or follows other grave violations against children. Children are taken by force from homes, schools and public spaces by parties to conflict for a range of purposes, including for recruitment and use as combatants or in support functions, to be subjected to rape or other forms of sexual violence, such as forced marriage and sexual slavery, and for ransom and indoctrination. The threat of abduction often forces children, especially girls, to stop attending school, disrupting their access to education. The Special Representative has reported through the years on how parties to conflict have used abduction in systematic campaigns of violence against civilian populations as a means of instilling fear and terror, in retaliation against Governments and as punishment for schoolchildren attending Western-style schools, or to exert control over or force the displacement of particular ethnic groups or religious communities. For example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Kamonia Territory, Kasai Province, Bana Mura militias abducted 49 girls and 15 boys between March and May 2017, forced them to work on farms, and raped and sexually abused the girls. The children abducted by those militias were allegedly targeted because of their ethnic affiliation. The militias reportedly changed the children’s Luba/Lulua names to Chokwe names. The number of Yezidi children abducted in 2014, including in Sinjar, Iraq, is indicative of targeting by ISIL of minority communities, with Turkmen, Shabak and Christian children also reportedly abducted in large numbers. In that context, the Special Representative welcomes the call to end the abduction of children in conflict and crises, initiated by the Permanent Missions to 4