The United Nations General Assembly by Resolution 69/157 of 18 December 2014 requested the former Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, to commission an in-depth global study on children deprived of liberty. In October 2016, Manfred Nowak (Austria) has been appointed as Independent Expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. The global study “The United Nations Global Study on Children deprived of Liberty” will build upon the experiences from two previous UN Studies on children: The report of Graça Machel (Mozambique) on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children as well as the United Nations Study on Violence against Children, led by Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (Brazil), which provide us with a good blueprint for undertaking the Global Study. The Global Study will be carried out in close cooperation with Governments, civil society organisations and various UN agencies. As leading research institutes the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR) and the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization (EIUC) will coordinate the research efforts. Besides engaging in desk research and collecting data on the magnitude of the phenomenon, the UN Global Study will take into account views from around the world through national and regional consultations in order to realize the endeavor of drastically changing the lives of all children deprived of liberty.