A/HRC/30/48 61. These rules are punishable by lashing, which is often administered by Al-Hisbah, ISIS’ morality police. An all-female unit of Al-Hisbah, Al-Khansaa, is sometimes responsible for the lashing of women. 62. ISIS’ rules against the mixing of the sexes have adversely impacted women and girls’ ability to access health care. Many doctors fled ISIS-controlled areas in 2013, and there are very few female doctors present in the region. Consequently, specialist care for women and girls is extremely limited. 63. Sieges and the denial of humanitarian assistance have had a distinct impact on women. Lack of food and medical care has adversely affected the health of pregnant women and nursing mothers, as well as contributing to a rise in infant mortality. 64. While women continue to be the subject of violations – including being targeted based on their gender – to regard women solely as victims is to misunderstand the important and often overlooked female experience of the ongoing war. 65. Women make up more than half of Syrian refugees and IDPs. This is due to adult men being away fighting, or having been killed or disappeared. Where families remain intact, adult men from restive areas or from communities perceived to be in support of an opposing faction are often unwilling to move due to fears of arrest, detention or summary execution at checkpoints. Consequently, over the course of the conflict and outside of ISIScontrolled areas, the Syrian Arab Republic has seen a rise in female-headed households. Despite confronting great difficulties, women are often the primary caregivers and providers for their children. 66. Within the YPG, women make up an essential part of the Kurdish frontline fighting forces. In other areas of the Syrian Arab Republic, women risk their lives to aid their families and communities, for instance by smuggling food and medicine into areas besieged by the various parties to the conflict. 67. Women have become powerful voices in advocating for the political resolution of the conflict, though they remain absent from the conferences where high-level diplomatic discussions have taken place. It is essential that women participate fully in current and future political negotiations. The distinctly female experience of a war primarily waged by men must form part of the discussion of how to achieve peace and justice in the Syrian Arab Republic. D. Children 68. Syrian children’s lives have been blighted by the war’s brutality. An untold number have suffered the same violations as adults, without discrimination. Parties to the conflict continue to recruit and use children in the conduct of hostilities. 69. ISIS has executed children in Hasakah, Raqqah and Dayr Az-Zawr. In May, ISIS executed a family, including minors as young as 14, in a village in Dayr Az-Zawr. Residents, including children, were made to watch. ISIS has also forced children into the role of executioner. The terrorist group has released videos showing a firing squad of children executing captured men in Palmyra, as well as of a 10-year-old cutting the throat of a captured soldier in Homs. 70. Thousands of children have been killed and injured in the Government’s indiscriminate aerial bombardments on Aleppo, Damascus, Dara’a, Idlib and Dayr Az-Zawr. In May, a barrel bomb hit Al-Rajaa school in a residential neighbourhood of Aleppo city. There were no military positions in the area. At least five children, and several teachers, were killed. 10