A/HRC/37/47 occasion of a conference organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the British Red Cross on the theme “Modern armed conflict and the evolution of international humanitarian law”. During that visit, the Special Representative also met with representatives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a number of London-based NGOs. During the same trip, the Special Representative travelled to Berlin to meet with counterparts in the German Federal Foreign Office to discuss child protection concerns. In August, the Special Representative also met with the Assistant Secretary-General for the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011. 42. Many initiatives in the reporting period were directly related to the children and armed conflict elements of the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, in October, the Special Representative addressed the Security Council in an Arria formula meeting organized by the Permanent Mission of Italy and its partners, the Permanent Missions of France, Sweden and Uruguay, on the issue of attacks on schools. During her intervention, the Special Representative focused on the need for protecting the right to education for those affected by armed conflict. In December, members of her Office travelled to Panama to make a presentation at a meeting entitled “Strengthening the role of defence actors in protecting education from attack and schools from military use”, which was organized by the Governments of Argentina, Norway and Panama and the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack. The disengagement, demobilization and reintegration of children in situations of armed conflict also remained an area of concern for the Special Representative during the reporting period. In that regard, she spoke at a high-level meeting on the topic with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belgium in New York in October. She also held two meetings with representatives of the World Bank in the reporting period to discuss collaboration on the protection of children, particularly related to the reintegration of children formerly associated with parties to conflict. During her visits to Washington, D.C., the Special Representative took the opportunity to meet with key counterparts in the State Department and representatives of Congress. The Special Representative also gave a keynote speech on the impact of conflict on children at the Stimson Center. On the same topic, in December 2017 she travelled to South Africa to attend a brainstorming and planning session on the treatment of former child soldiers from Mozambique. 43. Throughout the reporting period, the Office of the Special Representative supported the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in the development of a thematic paper on trafficking in situations of conflict, which aims to enhance the response of the United Nations to such crimes. To that end, in September, members of the Office travelled to Vienna to take part in an expert group meeting on the topic of trafficking in conflict zones. In November in Milan, the Special Representative attended the thirty-ninth annual forum of Parliamentarians for Global Action on the theme of preventing violent extremism and mass atrocities, at which she participated in a panel on “Addressing the drivers and root causes of violent extremism and mass atrocities and identifying successful strategies for deradicalization”. That same month, she spoke on the topic of “Crisis and conflict: protecting the most vulnerable” at the fourth Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child Labour in Buenos Aires. That interaction continues the strong collaboration with the International Labour Organization, particularly regarding the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers. B. Working with regional organizations African Union 44. The strong partnership between the Special Representative and the African Union has continued and the Special Representative travelled to N’Djamena in October to take part in a retreat for special envoys and mediators. The retreat focused on the emerging world order, multilateralism and Africa, and the Special Representative worked with 12