Cradled by Conflict was the culmination of a two-year research project led by UNU, in collaboration with UNICEF, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), and the Governments of Luxembourg and Switzerland. The initiative aimed to fill key knowledge gaps about child recruitment and use by armed groups in contemporary armed conflicts, including those groups listed as terrorist and characterized as “violent extremist”. The initiative also examined the factors that impede child release from such groups. The goal of this project is to use the empirical findings of the research to inform programmatic guidance for actors in the field working to prevent the recruitment and use of children by contemporary armed groups and to effectively disengage children from such groups.