A/HRC/28/77 49. States must take all feasible measures to ensure the protection and care of children belonging to minorities who are at risk of or have experienced violence, in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and international humanitarian law. 50. States should establish effective policing and security mechanisms capable of immediately stopping violence against minorities when it breaks out. They should establish and maintain strong and efficient channels of communication between communities and law enforcement bodies to enable communities under attack to contact State authorities quickly and trigger security responses. 51. Law enforcement personnel must be objective and professional, and act appropriately and without prejudice to protect minority communities. Positive practices include rapid deployment of ethnically and religiously mixed personnel to areas of intercommunal tension and violence, and appropriate command structures being put in place to enable officers on the ground to take operational decisions required to protect or defend communities experiencing violence. 52. Where appropriate, States should ensure that law enforcement responses to violence include deployment of female officers and other personnel who, where possible, are trained in dealing with women who may be victims of rape and other forms of gender-based violence. 53. States must ensure that minorities are not forced to leave their homes. In situations where minorities are forced to relocate for security reasons, relocation should take place with their free and informed consent and minorities, including women, should be involved in the planning and management of their relocation. Displacement locations should not expose minorities to additional risks, including those faced by women who may have to leave secure environments to collect food and water, access essential medical services and sanitation or other basic supplies. States should protect the property rights of minority groups and members of minorities, as well as their places of religious worship and cultural heritage. 54. Where possible, States should rapidly collect reliable data to establish and evaluate the impact of ongoing violence on minorities, including the number of deaths, injured persons, persons deprived of their liberty or displaced, and incidents of gender-based violence. 2. Recommendations to non-State actors 55. Other parties to armed conflicts, in particular any armed groups, must fully comply with international humanitarian and human rights law and should take all measures to ensure that the rights and security of minorities are adequately protected in areas under their control. Non-State armed groups should take part in interactive dialogue and a mediation process within the framework of peace negotiations to ensure the protection of civilians, in particular minorities facing atrocity crimes. 56. National human rights institutions should play a role in stopping violence, including by publicly denouncing violence, offering to act as impartial mediators in conflict situations, designing and implementing policies and programmes in emergency situations, monitoring, investigating and reporting episodes of targeted violence against minorities including, where necessary, to regional and international bodies. 57. National human rights institutions should promote consultation and dialogue with all parties to the conflict and conduct research and fact-finding missions in order to investigate incidents of violence against minorities. The role of national human rights institutions may be particularly important in mediation and independent investigation, particularly where the State and/or law enforcement bodies are perpetrators of, or implicated in, violence. 10