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A/HRC/28/69 10 facilities, in particular in the investigation branches of the Military Intelligence Directorate and prisons administered by the General Security Directorate in Damascus. State officials have perpetrated rape, a crime against humanity. 61. Many victims of sexual and gender-based violence spoke out once they had been released from detention, while others took time to relay their experiences of violations perpetrated in secret or cloaked in silence or taboo. Underreporting and delayed reporting of sexual violence continues to be endemic. Contemporaneous medical documentation is rare, and is hampered by the denial of medical assistance to detainees in custodial contexts, where most sexual violence is committed. Many of the women interviewed had been displaced and sought shelter in neighbouring States. They are in desperate need of psychosocial support, which must be maximized to help victims of sexual violence. 62. Lack of access to medical care has affected the prenatal and postnatal health of women and their children. Women in labour have not been allowed through government checkpoints and have often been forced to give birth under dangerous circumstances. In areas under siege, women have given birth in unsterile conditions and without pain medication. 63. Armed groups, including Ahrar Al-Sham and Jabhat Al-Nusra, have targeted women and children on the basis of their gender, to be taken as hostages for use in prisoner exchanges. Yazidi women, abducted from Iraq, have been brought into the Syrian Arab Republic and sold (and re-sold) in markets or distributed to ISIS fighters as war booty. Kept as slaves, they are subject to horrific and repeated sexual violence. Girls and women in ISIS-controlled areas live in fear of forced marriage to the fighters. 64. The imposition by ISIS of a strict interpretation of sharia law previously unseen in the Syrian Arab Republic – setting out edicts on all aspects of life, from dress to movement, employment and religious observance – has restricted basic freedoms, particularly for women. Women and girls over the age of 10 must be fully covered when venturing outdoors. Women and girls are not permitted to be in the company of men outside of their immediate family. Failure to abide by these rules is punishable by lashing. Punishments may be carried out by the Al-Hisbah morality police, but increasingly they are the responsibility of the all-female brigade Al-Khans’aa. ISIS has executed women, as well as men, on charges of adultery. Instances of women being stoned to death have been documented. Such public displays of brutality are utilized to instil fear among women for disobeying ISIS edicts. 4. Children 65. The Commission has witnessed the deterioration of children’s rights in the Syrian Arab Republic. Children have been killed, injured and maimed, suffering the direct consequences of the indiscriminate violence of government forces. They have also been affected by displacement, loss of relatives and the trauma of witnessing acts of violence. 66. Intelligence and security agencies have detained young children since 2011. Held in the same cells as adults, children are exposed to sexual violence and subjected to the same ill-treatment and torture as adult detainees. In detention, children have also witnessed violent torture and death. 67. As the unrest developed into an armed conflict, government forces began to use children as part of coordinated military operations to locate armed group fighters prior to attack or act as informants, exposing them to retaliation and punishment. 68. With approximately 5,000 schools destroyed in the Syrian Arab Republic, the resulting sharp decline in children’s education continues to be articulated as one of the greatest concerns among those interviewed. Government forces attack schools in th