A/HRC/40/49 the United Nations of Qatar and the United States of America on the occasion of Universal Children’s Day 2018. 9. Abducting or seizing children against their will or the will of their adult guardians, either temporarily or permanently and without due cause, is a violation under international human rights law. The abduction of a child violates the rights of the child and the family, as recognized by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. European, American and African regional human rights instruments also proscribe the abduction of children. The obligation of States to prevent child abduction is expressly stipulated in international human rights law. The abduction of children is also implicitly prohibited under international humanitarian law. While not recognized as a distinct crime under international law, the commission of a number of international crimes may involve acts of abduction, such as enslavement, hostage-taking, sexual slavery, enforced disappearance and the forcible transfer of children from one group to another with the intention of destroying the group. Child abduction may also be conducted with the purpose of committing further violations that amount to crimes under international law, such as enlisting or conscripting children under 15 years of age, forced marriage or forced pregnancy. All such conduct may amount to genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. 10. Cross-border abduction of children has been especially prevalent in recent years and used by a range of armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army, Boko Haram and ISIL. In some instances, children abducted in one country have been transported across borders to be trained, used as fighters, married, sold or enslaved in a neighbouring country. For example, boys and girls abducted in Iraq by ISIL have been taken over the border to the Syrian Arab Republic to be sold, trained and used by the group there; children in the Lake Chad Basin region have been abducted by Boko Haram in one country and brought to another to be forcibly married, to fight and for logistical support. Abductions, including a cross-border element, not only magnify the already severe protection concerns children face in conflict situations, but also further increase the complexity of monitoring and prevention and response efforts. For example, when children are abducted across borders and subsequently captured for their association with an armed group, cross-border standard operating procedures for the interim care, handover, repatriation and reintegration of those children are needed, but are absent in most cases. 11. In 2015, the Security Council acknowledged the gravity of that violation, adopting resolution 2225 (2015) which established that parties to armed conflict that engage in patterns of abduction of children should be listed in the annexes of the annual report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict. Subsequently, in 2016, six parties to conflict were listed for that violation. In 2018, the number more than doubled with 14 parties listed. In 2017, the number of children verified as abducted under the monitoring and reporting mechanism increased by 70 per cent compared to 2016. In Somalia alone, over 1,600 children were abducted by Al-Shabaab in 2017 and subsequently sent to madrasas and trainings camps and used as soldiers or in various support roles. In Nigeria, Boko Haram often specifically abducted girls to use them as human bombs, tying improvised explosive devices to their bodies and forcing them to perpetrate suicide attacks, or for forcible marriage or as sex slaves. In February 2018, for instance, the group abducted 110 girls and 1 boy from a technical college in Dapchi, Yobe State, the majority of whom have, however, since been released. 12. Despite the large number of parties listed for child abduction, no action plan to date specifically addresses this violation, one of the reasons being that the United Nations has no engagement with several of the parties concerned. The revised and expanded action plan currently under elaboration with the Government of South Sudan will be the first to include concrete measures to address abduction. The Special Representative has further identified a need to provide more conceptual clarity to child protection practitioners in the field as to how better to differentiate abduction from other practices against a child’s liberty, such as illegal and arbitrary detention. There also remain questions around the specific measures that could be included in an action plan to end and prevent abduction. While in many situations it is difficult to prevent abduction, apart from ending the conflict itself, it is important to provide the authorities, humanitarian actors and communities with measures 5