A/HRC/43/CRP.6 those enlisting or conscripting them, or using them in active hostilities, may be individually liable for war crimes under international criminal law.51 85. Armed groups also launched attacks against civilians, often indiscriminate in nature, thereby committing the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the death or injury of civilians. Attacks on schools and the use of educational facilities by armed groups further endangered children’s lives and impeded access to education for scores of children living in areas under their control. 86. While detaining children, non-state armed groups were responsible for torture and other forms of ill-treatment. When these acts were committed in the context of a noninternational armed conflict, they constitute the war crimes of abduction, cruel treatment and torture. 87. By perpetrating rape and other forms of sexual violence, armed groups committed war crimes of rape and other forms of sexual violence, including torture and outrages upon personal dignity. These acts contravene international human rights norms including the right to life, liberty and security of person, the right to freedom from torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Forced marriages may also amount to crimes against humanity.52 88. Girls living in areas under the control of HTS terrorists suffered severe psychological harm due to restrictions on their movement and religious dress codes imposed by the group. Edicts formally delivered to populations living under the control of HTS disproportionally affected adolescent girls and demonstrated discriminatory treatment on the basis of sex, in breach of fundamental international human rights norms. 89. Between 2013 and 2016, ISIL terrorists publically executed children and thereby committed the war crime of murder. ISIL forced girls as young as 14 to marry the group’s fighters. Forced marriages constitute sexual violence and amount to the war crimes of cruel treatment and, in many instances, rape. When committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, forced marriage may also amount to a crime against humanity. These acts also constitute serious abuses of the international human rights of women and girls including the rights to freely choose a spouse and enter into marriage only with free and full consent.53 90. The Commission has previously reported on Yazidi women and girls taken into ISIL held areas in the Syrian Arab Republic.54 ISIL did not allow their members who “owned” Yazidis to sell the Yazidi children separately. This rule was changed in mid-2016 and resulted in the separation of children from their mothers and subsequent sale of young boys as house servants, and girls as young as nine years as sexual slaves. Such children were often then given Muslim names. Identifying their ancestry remains problematic. VI. Recommendations 91. Eight years of conflict has not only left an enormous trauma on the physical and mental well-being of an entire generation of Syrian girls and boys, but also destroyed the social, economic and cultural fabric required for Syrian communities to start healing. As a 51 52 53 54 20 The Optional Protocol to the Convention, which the Syrian Arab Republic adopted in 2003, sets – without reservation – 18 years as the minimum age for participation in hostilities, for recruitment into armed groups, and for compulsory recruitment by governments. Under Article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and (e)(vii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years or using them to actively participate actively in hostilities amounts to a war crime in non-international armed conflict. See, e.g., Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Case 002 Closing Order, 15 September 2010, at para. 1443; see also The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen, Decision on the confirmation of charges against Dominic Ongwen, Pre-Trial Chamber II, No.: ICC-02/04-01/15, 23 March 2016, at para. 95. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 18 December 1979, at Art. 1(b). See “‘They came to destroy’: ISIS crimes against Yazidis”, conference room paper A/HRC/32/CRP.2