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Recruitment is multi-causal. Factors like territorial control, physical and food security, family networks, identity, status and financial incentives can contribute to child involvement. Exiting armed groups is a process, not an event. Transitions to “civilian life” remain challenging, particularly when children are “reintegrated” into situations of displacement. The evidence presented herein should guide discussions about how to prevent child recruitment and craft effective reintegration support. 

The post Child Recruitment and Exits from Armed Groups: Evidence from the Lake Chad Basin to Inform the UNSC CAAC Debate first appeared on UNIDIR.

The findings provide an insight into the expectations and experiences of child exits from armed groups, the reintegration support provided, community and family acceptance, and the risk of re-recruitment and continued engagement after exiting an armed group. 

Such knowledge has the potential to strengthen interventions that support children after they leave armed groups and re-enter civilian life, and to ensure that programming accounts for the unique needs of children.

The post Child Exits from Armed Groups in the Lake Chad Basin (Findings Report 31) first appeared on UNIDIR.

Findings highlight a range of social, civic, and family-based factors related to recruitment which may be of use when designing prevention and reintegration strategies for children in the Lake Chad Basin region.

The post Child Recruitment in the Lake Chad Basin (Findings Report 22) first appeared on UNIDIR.

It presents findings on their experiences of leaving armed groups as children and reintegrating back into civilian life without formal support. This data may be useful to government, UN, and NGO partners working in Colombia, supporting their policies and programming to prevent and respond to child recruitment and reintegration. The report ends with key policy and programmatic recommendations that were constructed with the nine participants as part of the participatory exercise.

The post “It’s Like Starting From Scratch”: Informal Support Accessed by Individuals who Disengaged from Armed Groups as Children in Colombia (Findings Report 21) first appeared on UNIDIR.

It also draws on research conducted with Iraqis returning from Al Hol camp in Syria through Jeddah-1 camp, with interviews facilitated by IOM Iraq and support from the Swiss FDFA. The research in Jeddah-1 camp included ten focus group discussions conducted with Jeddah-1 residents in July 2022; key informant interviews with camp leadership, government officials, and camp service providers; a survey conducted with 223 Jeddah-1 camp residents in August 2022; and phone surveys completed with 60 former Jeddah-1 residents who had returned to their areas of origin, in September 2022. Finally, the report also draws on key informant interviews with mukhtars, tribal sheikhs, and key political and security actors in areas where Jeddah-1 residents have returned (19 interviews total).

The report presents findings on children’s return and reintegration journeys in Iraq and looks at the experiences of children who have lived under ISIL, those who have returned from Al Hol camp in Syria, and/or children whose families are perceived as having ISIL affiliation. It examines metrics of wellbeing for these children and the challenges they face post-return and concludes with key policy and programmatic recommendations that may be useful to government, UN, and NGO partners working to support the return and effective reintegration of children in Iraq.

The post Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Children from Families with Perceived ISIL Affiliation: Experiences from Iraq and Al Hol (Findings Report 20) first appeared on UNIDIR.

It presents findings on past and current child recruitment patterns, with a particular focus on new dynamics of child recruitment that have arisen since the peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP (“Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo”) in 2016, including changes in recruitment tactics and recruitment of Venezuelan migrant and refugee children.

This data may be useful to government, UN, and NGO partners working in Colombia to support their policies and programming to prevent and respond to child recruitment in this changing landscape of insecurity and vulnerability.

The post Current Dynamics of Child Recruitment in Colombia (Findings Report 14) first appeared on UNIDIR.

Policymakers and practitioners face a crucial challenge: despite decades of disarmament and reintegration programming, people’s motivations to join, leave and potentially rejoin armed groups are often poorly understood. As a result, there is a significant knowledge gap as to which approaches are most effective in helping sustain the transition to civilian life after conflict. Without a nuanced understanding of these dynamics, interventions risk being ill-equipped to facilitate disarmament and reintegration, which in turn can increase the risks of recidivism and conflict renewal.

Identifying what drives individuals’ recruitment and reintegration journeys is essential for designing effective interventions. UNIDIR’s Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project helps fill critical evidence gaps and inform better-tailored approaches that promote and sustain pathways from conflict to peace.

Across six countries (Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Colombia and Iraq) the project has gathered fine-grained data that gets to the heart of why people disarm and demobilize, and before that, what leads them to join an armed group. This is done through:

• Quantitative methods (large-scale surveys of former armed group associates, former and current affiliates of community security and militia groups, and unaffiliated community members)

• Qualitative work (focus groups and key informant interviews)

• Other experimental and participatory approaches (such as research and photography workshops with conflict-affected youth).

A holistic assessment of conflict trajectories

UNIDIR’s Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project adopts a holistic approach to understanding reintegration progress. It examines former associates’ reintegration journeys through various dimensions, including economic, social and psychological well-being and perceptions of community trust and acceptance. This multifaceted approach helps examine the progress and challenges people face on their reintegration journeys and how different factors – including livelihood difficulties, environmental challenges, governance policies and gender norms – affect transitions to civilian life.

For individuals to disarm fully and permanently, it is important that they manage to establish civilian livelihoods and find ways to reintegrate into social life. This can be difficult amid ongoing insecurity, structural barriers or other factors.

In Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, for instance, the project found that individuals who left Boko Haram often felt physically threatened by their old group and faced significant obstacles in finding new income sources, partly due to restrictions on farming.

The concern with returnees who continue to feel unsafe after demobilizing or who struggle to meet their basic needs is that they may retain weapons to protect themselves or take up arms for their economic survival. Both outcomes can have destabilizing effects and undermine weapons collection programmes.

© 2015, ICRC/Jesus Andres Serrano Redondo

Measuring progress over time

Alongside its holistic assessment, a distinctive feature of the Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project is its longitudinal approach, following former associates and returnees for up to four consecutive years. This has allowed researchers to assess reintegration over time rather than through a single snapshot. It also makes it possible to identify factors that support or impede progress, such as receiving programming support or civil documentation.

The project’s findings confirm that reintegration is not an event but a long-term process shaped by individual, community and societal factors.

Disarmament and reintegration programmes therefore need to take into account what motivates individuals to disarm, their sources of resilience and the barriers that former associates may face for years after leaving their group, to better support them on their pathways away from conflict.

Addressing armed group recruitment to improve conflict prevention

Another important aspect of interrupting conflict cycles and preventing new ones from forming is to address the root causes of armed group recruitment and weapons proliferation. To better understand the drivers of armed violence, the project has collected robust evidence about people’s entries into armed groups. For instance, in a survey in the North East of Nigeria, around a quarter of respondents formerly associated with Boko Haram reported that they were promised something by the group when they initially became associated. These incentives included promises of economic well-being, but also education, a sense of belonging, assistance with marriage and safety from violence.

By unpacking the factors that influence recruitment, the project helps improve understanding of the root causes of conflict and supports partners in adapting prevention and peacebuilding strategies to people’s needs and realities on the ground. For example, the project has shown how climatic and environmental pressures can create conditions favourable to armed recruitment.

Across multiple surveys in the Lake Chad Basin, a notable percentage of former Boko Haram associates who reported climate-related livelihood difficulties before joining the group said that these difficulties played a role in their recruitment.

UNIDIR continues to explore the links between climate change and armed group involvement and behaviour to help identify emerging conflict risks and ensure that interventions remain responsive to changing conditions.

Through its holistic, comparative approach across multiple case studies, the project has shown that recruitment dynamics can be highly context-specific and vary significantly across settings. In Colombia, for instance, UNIDIR’s research found that some survivors of sexual violence from the Nasa Indigenous communities of northern Cauca joined FARC dissident groups in search of justice, in part because the mechanisms available in their communities failed to deliver justice and accountability for perpetrators.

The project works with local partners and communities across conflict settings to disseminate its research findings and supports them in adopting evidence-based approaches that respond to local needs. Its research contributes to improving understanding of why individuals enter armed groups and acquire weapons. This nuanced knowledge is crucial to inform and support conflict prevention initiatives, which are often underprioritized but vital elements of a comprehensive disarmament strategy.

© 2020, ICRC/Prichilla Absi

The two-way reality of reintegration

The reintegration of former associates of armed groups is not a one-way process. For them to return to civilian life, they need to be received and accepted by the communities to which they return. Given this reality, UNIDIR also gathers evidence about the lived experiences of unaffiliated communities affected by conflict.

This is important for two reasons:

1. It helps understand how communities are affected by and cope with insecurity and conflict, and how aid programmes can be tailored to address their needs and assist victims and survivors.
   
2. It provides a fuller picture of reintegration progress.

The project’s nuanced approach is essential in this regard, because although superficial measures of acceptance can seem high in some cases, qualitative analysis can reveal specific instances of rejection or discrimination against returnees.

In Iraq, for example, the high acceptance rates reported by Iraqi returnees from Al-Hol camp in Syria, who were often perceived to be affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, were not necessarily mirrored by the perceptions of community members living in the same areas of return to the same extent.

UNIDIR’s evidence can uncover specific barriers that need to be addressed by policies and interventions in conflict-affected communities to promote receptivity in practice. By underlining the importance of investing in returnees’ community entry and promoting social cohesion, this research helps strengthen reintegration support and the prospects of sustainable transitions away from conflict.

Evidence to inform policy and practice

The project builds on UNIDIR’s expertise in disarmament by taking into consideration the multifaceted dimensions of human security and integrating a people-centred approach to disarmament and reintegration programming. Through collaboration with UN, regional, national and local partners, the Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project equips practitioners and policymakers with high-quality, evidence-based information that fills critical knowledge gaps.

Earlier in the year, the project was shortlisted for the first edition of the UN 2.0 Awards, which recognize UN system initiatives that are achieving outstanding results through new ways of working and new solutions.

UNIDIR’s work helps inform the international community’s design and implementation of effective interventions that assist individuals and their communities in transitioning away from violent conflict and building durable peace.

The post Championing a people-centred approach to disarmament and reintegration first appeared on UNIDIR.

These are the kinds of questions that UNIDIR’s Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project is addressing through the launch of a new set of interactive data dashboards.

A closer look at life after conflict

Launched this month, the Data Dashboards for Managing Exits from Armed Conflict  are an open-access portal where users can explore de-identified, individual-level data collected from surveys with former associates of armed groups, affiliates of community security actors (e.g., militia groups), and unaffiliated community members affected by conflict.

The first three dashboards cover Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria — countries that have all experienced the devastating impacts of the Boko Haram conflict. The dashboards shed light on trajectories out of armed groups, community experiences with conflict and perceptions on reintegration, local security dynamics, and more.

And these are just the beginning. UNIDIR’s Project has been conducting similar surveys in other conflict-affected contexts — including Colombia, Iraq, and Niger — with new dashboards to be published as data becomes available.

Turning research into practical tools

Traditionally, findings from peace and security research are shared through detailed reports. While these offer valuable depth and analysis, they can sometimes be difficult to navigate for practitioners who need quick, targeted insights to inform their work on the ground.

Digital tools such as the dashboards change that. Users can now filter and explore the data based on their own interests — for example, comparing how men and women experience reintegration, or how trust in security actors differs across communities.

This flexibility makes the platform useful not just for researchers, but for anyone working on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, peacebuilding, prevention, or community development.

From field research to actionable insights

The dashboards bring together the Project’s extensive field research from Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, Iraq, Niger and Nigeria, and turns it into interactive tools that are easy to navigate. Whether you are a practitioner, policymaker or researcher, you can explore the data in ways that matter to your work.

This is about closing the gap between data and decision-making — and ensuring prevention and reintegration efforts are informed by the real experiences of people living through conflict and recovery. Their perspectives should be the starting point, not an afterthought.

Dr Siobhan O’Neil, Head of UNIDIR’s Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project

The post New UNIDIR data dashboards released to better understand armed group exits first appeared on UNIDIR.

The significance of this briefing lies in its response to a critical gap in current approaches to supporting conflict-affected children and youth. Engagement with youth in programming often remains extractive and tokenistic, with the experiences and needs of young people interpreted through the lens of adult researchers and practitioners. MEAC, a pioneer in employing participatory multi-method approaches to policy research, remains steadfast in amplifying the voices and perspectives of those most marginalized, especially children and youth impacted by conflict. Integral to MEAC’s mission are ongoing initiatives to shift the paradigm in how the international community engages with conflict-affected children and youth. 

To this end, MEAC and its partners are pioneering a tripartite global programme across Nigeria, Iraq, and Colombia. This ongoing intervention encompasses participatory research, artistic expression, and socio-emotional processing tailored to equip children and youth with photography and research skills, confidence, and the space to process their experiences. This programme also aims to elevate youth voices into policymaking discussions, ensuring they are part of global conversations at the United Nations in New York. 

Click here for more information on MEAC.

The post Briefing for the Members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child first appeared on UNIDIR.

Meet UNIDIR’s Managing Exits from Armed Conflict (MEAC) team at the Peacebuilding Marketplace and explore the project and its evidence on journeys into and out of armed groups. Through research with former armed group associates as well as conflict-affected communities, MEAC generates context-specific insights to help policymakers and practitioners prevent recruitment, strengthen reintegration and interrupt conflict cycles. Its research across Colombia, Iraq and the Lake Chad Basin region sheds light on why people become involved with armed groups, what enables them to leave and what shapes their prospects for rebuilding their lives.

Reflecting the Forum’s theme, “Choose Peace”, the showcase will explore what is needed to make peace a reality for people and communities affected by conflict. Visitors are invited to stop by the MEAC stand, meet the team, explore its latest research and exchange ideas on translating evidence into more effective policy and programming.

When and where

Tuesday, 13 October 2026 | 08:30–18:00 CEST | Espace Ruth Dreifuss, Centre International de Conférences Genève, Geneva, Switzerland

Participants

The event is open to all registered Geneva Peace Forum participants.

RSVP

To participate, please register on the Geneva Peace Forum 2026 registration page.

Further information

For any questions, please contact Jessica Caus at jessica.caus@un.org.

The post UNIDIR at the Geneva Peace Forum’s Peacebuilding Marketplace first appeared on UNIDIR.

During the session on preventing recruitment and ensuring adequate reintegration, she shared evidence on children’s trajectories into and out of armed groups and discussed tailoring the international response.

The post Oslo International Conference on Protecting Children in Armed Conflict first appeared on UNIDIR.

Discussions included UNIDIR’s recent research on child recruitment by armed groups and subsequent reintegration paths post-association.

Related publications:

• Child Exits from Armed Groups in the Lake Chad Basin (Findings Report 31)
• Child Recruitment in the Lake Chad Basin (Findings Report 22)
• Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Children from Families with Perceived ISIL Affiliation: Experiences from Iraq and Al Hol (Findings Report 20)
• “It’s Like Starting From Scratch”: Informal Support Accessed by Individuals who Disengaged from Armed Groups as Children in Colombia (Findings Report 21)

The post Briefing for the Members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child first appeared on UNIDIR.

This discussion will feature new findings derived from focus groups, surveys, and participatory research work with children and youth in Iraq, Colombia, Nigeria, and the rest of the Lake Chad Basin. Experts, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers will then examine how policy and practice can be adapted to better address the vulnerabilities, needs, and aspirations of young people affected by conflict.

The post MEAC Briefing on Emerging Evidence of Child Recruitment and Reintegration Progress in Iraq, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Rest of the Lake Chad Basin first appeared on UNIDIR.