HIGHLIGHTS OF RESULTS rights to national protection mechanisms, such as the police and the Office of the Prosecutor. In addition, some were also involved in coalitions of NGOs that submitted alternative reports to the Committees of CAT, CEDAW and CRC and to the UPR between 2015 and 2017. The National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria improved its complaints handling system to enhance access to discriminated groups. As a result, the Commission received 90,000 complaints in 2017 as opposed to less than 22,000 in 2012. In South Sudan, the National Dialogue and the sensitization activities organized by the Technical Committee for the establishment of the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing promoted the participation of women, youth and persons with disabilities in the national consultations. Additionally, the 2017 edition of the UN Human Rights Minorities and Indigenous Fellowship Programmes helped 48 advocates from 46 minority and indigenous communities to learn about the international human rights machinery and reinforce their international advo- cacy skills. Many of the fellows subsequently claimed and advocated for their rights in national, regional and international human rights mechanisms. Engagement by the international community In 2017, there were unprecedented large-scale displacements of women, men and children in countries across the globe, contributing to a larger number of refugees and migrants. In the Asia-Pacific region, the human rights system gave significant attention to the human rights situation of the Rohingya people crossing borders to escape persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and to the impact of the migration policies of receiving countries. Migration policy remained at the top of the agendas of the EU and its member states. Various EU institutions issued a variety of policy documents to address the numbers of individuals arriving in Europe. While EU migration policies and practices, such as those relating to the Central Mediterranean and the adoption of informal readmission agreements, The abuelas of Sepur Zarco: Over 30 years of fighting for justice for the survivors of sexual violence during Guatemala’s civil war The actions of 15 Mayan Q’eqchí women, called the Sepur Zarco Grandmothers, broke more than 30 years of silence and became an example to the world by demonstrating that access to justice can be achieved for the gravest violations of women’s rights. In Q’eqchí, the native language of the members of the Sepur Zarco community in eastern Guatemala, there are four words to refer to sexual violence. “Muxuk,” meaning that a woman has been “desecrated” and that her life has been totally torn apart, is the word that 11 women chose to describe what they were subjected to between 1982 and 1988 at a military base just outside of their village. At the height of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which left over 200,000 people dead, the women of Sepur Zarco underwent systematic rape and sexual slavery. They were also used as domestic servants by the Guatemalan military. Meanwhile, their husbands and children were forcibly disappeared, tortured and killed. To this day, their whereabouts are only partially known. In February 2016, after more than 30 years of fighting for truth, justice and reparations, the grandmothers of Sepur Zarco, as they are respectfully called, finally faced their 20 UN HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2017 tormentors in a courtroom in Guatemala City and were given the opportunity to speak. On the twenty-second day of the trial, the judge handed down a groundbreaking sentence of 120 and 240 years of imprisonment for two military officers, respectively. For the first time in Guatemala, a national court ruled on charges of sexual slavery during an armed conflict, qualifying them as crimes against humanity. Moreover, the court instituted the concept of transformative reparations and emphasized that it was the context of social exclusion in which the community lived, including the past denials of their rights to health, education, land and political participation, which had furthered the systematic violations of human rights. Hence, the judge ordered that reparations focus on the empowerment of both the direct victims of abuses and of the community as a whole. Through the Maya Programme, UN Human Rights supported the Sepur Zarco women and provided legal advice to the organizations fighting for their cause over many years. The Office also facilitated dialogue between the community and the State actors mandated to implement the reparation measures decided by the court.