58 with international standards, with an approach that takes into account that the victims were children at the time of the facts. Thus, it is essential that the State adopt clear and concrete strategies designed to overcome impunity in the prosecution of forced disappearances of children during the Salvadoran armed conflict, in order to highlight the systematic nature of this crime that particularly affected Salvadoran children, and thereby prevent such events from being repeated. 185. Therefore, in this section the Court will consider all the requested measures of reparation that are correlated to the investigations aimed at determining the whereabouts of the victims and those responsible for their forced disappearance and for other related illegal acts. 1. Investigation, identification, prosecution and, if appropriate, punishment of all the perpetrators and masterminds 186. Both the Commission and the representatives asked the Court to order the State to conduct a full, impartial, exhaustive and effective investigation to identify, prosecute and, if appropriate, punish all those responsible for the disappearances and related crimes to the detriment of the child victims in the instant case. In addition, the Commission asked the Court to order the State to conduct the investigations required to identify and punish those who participated in the concealment of the facts and the denial of justice. The representatives requested that the State investigate the officials and/or employees responsible for the investigations and reiterated their request that the State be ordered to establish a Special Commission within the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic to investigate the disappearance of children, or to train a specialized human rights unit to investigate cases of disappeared children during the armed conflict, with specialized prosecutors and sufficient resources, given the “evident inertia in the investigation of those responsible. The State merely indicated that, although it had acknowledged that the obligation to investigate would be guided and promoted by the National Commission to Search for Disappeared Children during the Internal Armed Conflict, this did not preclude actions undertaken by the Salvadoran judicial system for the same purpose and with the aim of investigating and identifying the perpetrators and masterminds responsible for the forced disappearance of the children in the instant case. Considerations of the Court 187. In Chapter VII-2 of this judgment, the Court declared the violation of the rights to judicial guarantees and judicial protection given that the domestic proceedings, taken as a whole, have not constituted effective remedies to determine the fate or to discover the whereabouts of the victims, or to guarantee their rights of access to justice and to know the truth, through the investigation and eventual punishment of those responsible, together with full reparation for the consequences of the violations. Thus, more than 30 years after the events took place and 12 years after the first investigations were opened, impunity prevails along with the lack of effectiveness in the investigations and criminal proceedings. This is reflected in the fact that none of those responsible has been identified or even linked to the investigations. 188. Bearing in mind the request made by the Commission and the representatives, as well as its case law,290 the Court orders that the State continue, effectively and with the utmost diligence, the investigations already opened, and that it open any others that may be necessary to identify, prosecute and, if appropriate, punish those responsible for the forced disappearance of José Adrián Rochac Hernández, Santos Ernesto Salinas, Emelinda Lorena Hernández, Manuel Antonio Bonilla and Ricardo Abarca Ayala, and for other unlawful acts connected with their disappearance. This obligation must be fulfilled within a reasonable time, in order to establish the truth of the facts and to determine the possible criminal responsibilities, considering the criteria established for investigations in cases of 290 Cf. Case of Anzualdo Castro v. Peru, supra, para. 181, and Case of Osorio Rivera and Family v. Peru, supra, para. 244.

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