A/HRC/45/49 Conflict was signed.5 At the time of writing, the Joint Office and United Nations agencies were taking part in the formulation of a road map for the implementation of the addendum. The adoption of an action plan on sexual violence by the Congolese national police in November 2019 also constitutes noteworthy progress. 2. Action taken by the Joint Human Rights Office 40. In addition to its monitoring, information-gathering and reporting work, the Joint Office continued its technical cooperation with the Office of the Special Presidential Adviser on young people and reducing violence against women. In that connection, the second joint consultative forum on conflict-related sexual violence was held in Kinshasa on 12 November 2019. It brought together governmental authorities, the defence and security forces, United Nations agencies and civil society actors from the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, Ituri and Tanganyika and the Kasai region. The event led to the establishment of a platform for information-sharing and making recommendations on the prevention of and response to conflict-related sexual violence. 41. The Joint Office continues to coordinate monthly meetings of the mechanism for monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements on conflict-related sexual violence, thus mobilizing humanitarian actors as part of response and prevention activities. It also continued to provide support to the justice system in setting up measures to protect victims and witnesses of sexual violence during judicial proceedings. 42. Furthermore, the Joint Office held training activities for officers of the Congolese national police and members of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Certain training courses resulted in 17 commanding officers undertaking in writing to end conflict-related sexual violence. The Joint Office continued to build the capacity of the Blue Helmets of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in terms of preventing and responding to conflict-related sexual violence, through training, the development of awareness-raising materials and informationgathering. 43. Since the emergence of COVID-19, the Joint Office has stepped up its support to civil society with a view to improving information gathering and the provision of assistance to victims of sexual violence. By collaborating with representatives of other agencies in the United Nations country team, the Joint Office supported the re-establishment of a helpline introduced by the Ministry of Gender, Family and Children’s Affairs and the Office of the Special Presidential Adviser on young people and reducing violence against women in order to receive victims’ calls and refer them to the appropriate services. 44. As part of efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in health-care facilities, the Joint Office called on officials responsible for social and gender affairs for the release of women and their newborns who were being detained in Kinshasa hospitals following childbirth for failure to pay their hospital fees. D. Efforts to combat impunity 45. In its concluding observations on the fourth periodic report of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Human Rights Committee requested the Government to take all necessary measures to end impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations, in particular the most serious violations, and to ensure that the families of the victims have access to effective remedies and to full reparation (CCPR/C/COD/CO/4, para. 12). 46. In its concluding observations on the second periodic report of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Committee against Torture recommended that the Government commute all death sentences handed down to prison sentences, initiate a process to formally 5 8 www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/joint-communique/addendum-aucommunique-conjoint-sur-les-violences-sexuelles-liees-au-conflit-entre-la-republique-democratiquedu-congo-et-lorganisation-des-nations-unies/RDC.pdf. GE.20-11014