A/HRC/21/38 law is consistent with their international legal obligations by making available adequate, effective, prompt and appropriate remedies to victims, including reparations, defining them as restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. Reparations can take various forms and may be individual, collective and/or communitybased. The effectiveness of any form of reparations is limited when the objective is only to return victims to the situation that existed before the violations, without addressing underlying gender inequalities and pre-existing discriminatory practices. 28. The conviction of Thomas Lubanga by the International Criminal Court not only set an important international precedent in terms of the war crime of recruiting and using children, but may also constitute a significant contribution to the development and definition of the right to reparations in international human rights law and customary international humanitarian law. Article 75 (1) of the Rome Statute requires the Court to establish principles relating to reparations to, or in respect of, victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including restitution, compensation and rehabilitation. The Court’s upcoming decision on reparations in the Lubanga case could strengthen the existing recognition of the right to reparations, as described in regional and international human rights law, including article 39 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 29. The International Criminal Court is the first international tribunal to include reparations to victims of war crimes in its mandate. It established the Trust Fund for Victims, which is tasked to provide general assistance in the form of physical rehabilitation, material support and psychosocial counselling to victims of international crimes in countries where the Court has jurisdiction, and to implement Court-ordered reparation awards. The Trust Fund has introduced an innovative approach to reparations in two ways: it is not linked to any specific case before the Court and supports victims both individually and collectively; and it is financed through basket funding from States and voluntary donations, which means that reparations are not limited to the financial means of the convicted person. Following the judgement in the Lubanga case, the Court and the Trust Fund will deal with legal and practical questions on the implementation of the reparations mandate, which may have implications for the larger child protection community. 30. Previous experience with reparations for children, either administrative or courtordered, has been limited. Past and present initiatives provide useful lessons learned and a sense of the challenges ahead. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, for example, was the first ad hoc and hybrid court mandated to order reparations to victims, albeit only of a collective and symbolic nature. The Special Court for Sierra Leone had no mandate to award reparations. Instead, the Government established an administrative reparations programme on the basis of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Resource limitations, however, have put a significant strain on the implementation of this reparations process. In Colombia, in the framework of the Justice and Peace Act, the Supreme Court ordered reparations to child victims of forced recruitment in the case against Freddy Rendón Herrera, alias ―El Alemán‖, who was accused of unlawful recruitment. The Court considered the needs and experience of each victim, in particular girls, to be different, and decided to focus on individual rehabilitation measures rather than collective material reparations. 31. The experiences of a significantly larger number of victims, and the loss and harm resulting from a wider range of violations, can be acknowledged and repaired through reparations programmes. Any decision on reparations should avoid an overly narrow definition of victims and their eligibility and not limit the violations allowing for reparations. It is important to include those victims who have not participated in court proceedings, maintaining an open list of applicants and conducting a series of registration periods. In deciding who is eligible for reparations, however, the limited human and financial resources must be taken into account. Priority should therefore be accorded to the 9