A/HRC/37/47 health-care facilities in conflict-affected areas with poor infrastructure, limited transportation and restrictions of movement are exponentially multiplied for those at-risk groups. Parties to conflict, as well as the relevant administrative authorities, need to be cognizant of the fact that denying essential aid to children can result in many more child deaths and is an egregious addition to the direct impact of hostilities. Even in instances when such services may not be considered an immediate life-saving activity, for example when vaccination campaigns are necessary, children can sustain long-term injuries or die if access is denied. 13. In that regard, the Special Representative urges parties to conflict to commit to a renewed focus on depoliticizing the issue and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to children. Those entities are reminded that it is a principle of customary international law that they must allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of aid to the civilian population in need in areas subject to their control. Furthermore, contained in regional human rights instruments3 and numerous resolutions of the Human Rights Council, General Assembly and Security Council is a demand that parties to conflict provide access for relief personnel to refugee and displaced populations, often with special reference to the plight of children. Lastly, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified international human rights instrument, has several provisions that necessitate the facilitation of humanitarian relief to children in need, including ensuring that children seeking refugee status receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance. 4 14. In a practical sense, the Special Representative urges parties to conflict to disseminate clear orders among their rank and file to specify that humanitarian assistance for children should be facilitated in all circumstances. Penalties should also be laid out for those who fail to adhere to this principle. She calls upon the Human Rights Council to support her call and encourages the inclusion of a focus on accountability for the denial of humanitarian access to children in the next annual full-day meeting of the Human Rights Council on the rights of the child, which will focus on the theme of “Protecting the rights of the child in humanitarian situations”. B. Grave violations, trafficking and the sale of children 15. The crimes of trafficking and the sale of children are closely linked to the six grave violations affecting children in situations of armed conflict, as identified by the Security Council. According to the definition outlined in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, trafficking is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation”. For children, the means is irrelevant and therefore it is simply the “action” and “purpose” that result in trafficking (see art. 3 (c) of the Protocol). The sale of children is defined in the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, which states that the “sale of children means any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration”. 16. In that context, the recruitment and use of children nearly always constitutes trafficking. The action (recruitment) and purpose (exploitation) are intrinsic elements of the 3 4 6 See, for example, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, art. 23; the InterAmerican Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, art. 9; and principles 4 and 19 of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. See also JeanMarie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck, Customary International Humanitarian Law, vol. 1: Rules, rule 131 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross, 2005). See Convention on the Rights of the Child, arts. 6, 22 (1), 24 and 27.