cases of rape are usually not dealt with as criminal offences but settled amicably, through financial compensation, under the supervision of tribal or village chiefs, and that the guilty parties are rarely brought to justice (arts. 2 and 16). The State party should redouble its efforts to prevent, combat and punish sexual violence and abuse against women and children. To this end, the State party should, inter alia, and in collaboration with the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) and United Nations specialized agencies in the field: (a) Conduct major information campaigns to raise awareness among the population and all parties to the conflict that acts of sexual violence are offences under criminal law, to break the taboos on sex crimes and to eliminate the stigmatization and exclusion of victims, which discourages them from lodging a complaint; (b) Continue with, and reinforce, the deployment of the Détachement intégré de sécurité (Integrated Security Detachment) (DIS) near sites for displaced persons and camps for refugees in order to guarantee protection for them, especially for women and children, to provide a simple mechanism for lodging complaints to which all have access and to ensure that complaints are systematically and immediately transmitted to the relevant authorities and that victims are protected; (c) Set up a rehabilitation and assistance scheme for victims; (d) Amend Act No. 06/PR/2002 on the promotion of reproductive health to include penalties for the perpetrators of sex crimes, or incorporate offences of sexual violence in the Criminal Code, providing for penalties proportional to the seriousness of the crimes; (e) Ensure that customary laws and practices are not invoked to justify violating the absolute prohibition of torture, as the Committee recalled in its general comment No. 2 (2007) on implementation of article 2 by States parties. Obligation to investigate and right to complain (21) The Committee is concerned that the current Code of Criminal Procedure contains no provisions authorizing the judicial authorities to launch investigations in prima facie cases of acts of torture and ill-treatment. Moreover, the Committee is alarmed at information submitted by the State party indicating that there is often no follow-up to complaints of torture brought to the attention of the public prosecutor or investigating judge (art. 12). The State party should revise the Code of Criminal Procedure to include clear provisions on the obligation of the competent authorities to systematically launch objective and impartial investigations, without consultation and without first receiving a complaint from the victim, whenever there are reasonable grounds for believing that an act of torture has been committed. Impunity (22) The Committee expresses serious concern about: (a) The fact that credible allegations of acts of torture and ill-treatment are rarely the subject of investigations or judicial proceedings and that the perpetrators are rarely convicted or, when they are, are given light sentences that do not reflect the seriousness of their crimes; (b) The climate of impunity for the perpetrators of acts of torture, including for members of the armed forces, the police, the National Security Agency, the former Documentation and Security Directorate and other State bodies, particularly when these are highly placed officials who reportedly planned, ordered or perpetrated acts of torture, notably during the regime of Hissène Habré or during the armed conflicts in 2006 and 2008; 75