1. Background Following a dedicated campaign by various stakeholders ranging from UN Member States and UN entities to NGOs, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on 18 December 2014 inviting the Secretary-General to commission an in-depth Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.1 One year later, the General Assembly passed another resolution on 17 December 2015 reminding the UN Member States to support the elaboration of the Global Study.2 In October 2016, I was appointed as Independent Expert leading the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. The Study’s implementation phase was severely delayed due to lack of funding. The funding of the Study was reliant on ‘voluntary contributions’ from Member States. In the end, our fundraising efforts were answered by financial contributions from Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Malta, Qatar, Switzerland, the European Union, UNICEF, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation and another private foundation. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to these ‘Friends of the Study’ as without their financial contributions, it would have been impossible to conduct such a comprehensive research project. Working on only one fifth of the originally foreseen budget and despite these minimal resources, activities were maximised, uniting many different stakeholders, including States, UN Agencies, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs), academic institutions and children. With the first year spent on securing the minimum funding to commence the research endeavour, the presentation of the report to the General Assembly was extended to October 2019.3 After 3 years of hard and dedicated work of close to 100 researchers worldwide, most of whom worked on a pro-bono basis, 3 expert meetings, 12 international thematic consultations, 274 interviews with children and countless fundraising talks, the Report to the General Assembly was presented on 8 October 2019 in the Third Committee in New York, which summarises the findings of this Global Study.4 1 Cf. UN General Assembly, Rights of the Child, A/RES/69/157 of 18 December 2015, 3 February 2015, para. 52(d). 2 Cf. UN General Assembly, Rights of the Child, A/RES/70/137 of 17 December 2015, 29 February 2016, para. 54. 3 Cf. UN General Assembly, Rights of the Child, A/RES/72/245 of 24 December 2017, 22 January 2017, para. 37. 4 Cf. UN General Assembly, Rights of the Child, Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, A/RES/74/136, 11 July 2019. 17