E/C.12/ARM/CO/2-3 The Committee recommends that the State party: (a) Strengthen social and financial support to families in situations of vulnerability, including by providing adequate child benefits for families living in extreme poverty, thereby allowing them to avoid placing their children in boarding schools and children’s homes for economic reasons; (b) Accelerate its efforts to provide alternative family- and communitybased care systems and ensure that institutional care is used only as a measure of last resort; (c) Introduce independent monitoring of the rights of children in institutions under the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Labour and Social Issues, and the authority of regional governments; (d) Prohibit the corporal punishment of children in all settings and sanction perpetrators. 20. The Committee is concerned about the limited availability of social housing for persons in need (art. 11). The Committee recommends that the State party adopt all appropriate measures to guarantee access to adequate and affordable housing for disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups, including for the families who are still living in temporary shelters as a result of the 1988 earthquake, inter alia by allocating adequate resources to increase the supply of social housing units, taking into account the Committee’s general comment No. 4 (1991) on the right to adequate housing. 21. The Committee is concerned about the widespread practice of “informal payments” being requested in health-care settings (art. 12). The Committee urges the State party to take urgent measures to eliminate the levying of informal fees and requests it to provide specific information on measures taken and their impact. 22. The Committee is concerned that Armenia has one of the highest levels of male births compared with female births observed anywhere in the world, as a result of sexselective abortions. The Committee further remains concerned that the rate of abortion is high, while information on, and the availability of, contraception is limited (arts. 3, 10 and 12). The Committee recommends that the State party: (a) Take proactive measures against sex-selective abortions, including legislative and administrative measures, in consultation with women, reproductive health personnel and other stakeholders; (b) Make contraceptives available, accessible and affordable to all women and men of reproductive age, including adolescents, and provide comprehensive ageappropriate sexual and reproductive health education; (c) Adopt measures to expedite the elimination of discrimination against women and girls, in particular addressing practices and social norms fuelling son preference; (d) Conduct comprehensive studies to identify the root causes of sexselective abortion and of discrimination against women in the State party and provide, in its next report, yearly plans to combat sex-selective abortions, taking on board the recommendations in the interagency statement on preventing gender-biased sex selection by United Nations specialized agencies in 2011. 6