We are living in an era in which the level of human suffering as a result of intra-state conflict seems to be escalating exponentially. The essential challenge remains, how to create the political impetus for timely, nonselective responses to human suffering (MacFarlane and Weiss, 2000). In 2014, the international community struggled to react and respond to many violent conflicts from Syria, to Israel, to South Sudan, to Central African Republic and the Ukraine. Attempts at peace treaties, ceasefires, military and humanitarian interventions have all fallen desperately short in addressing the immense human rights violations and overall human suffering taking place. Rhetoric, international laws, sanctions, diplomacy and United Nations Security Council Resolutions have done very little to change this reality. As a result we are left with a world in which the spiralling cyclical dynamics of violent conflict will continue to be felt for generations to come. At the very heart of the human suffering we are witnessing the plight of vulnerable populations, and most notably children. In humanitarian settings around the world today, children are often half of the population affected by conflicts and disasters, including the deliberate targeting of children as victims and as perpetrators of violence. Of all the threats that define contemporary conflict, the use of child soldiers presents one of the farthest-reaching and most disturbing trends. the___14 2014 Annual Report of the United Nations Special Representative for the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict lists 7 state armies and 50 non-state armed groups that currently recruit and use children in 14 countries around the world (United Nations, 2014). If in the past children were made to fight in spite of their youth, they are now being made to fight because of their youth. Conflict prevention is a concept that seems so inherently basic to the very human condition yet so difficult to achieve. Gandhi’s major focus was always on preventative measures that we must take in order to transform and remove the violent conditions and causes before they reach the point of exploding into terror or armed conflict. However, conflict prevention requires action by a multitude of stakeholders, who do not always understand how to communicate or act effectively across their mandates. It is therefore imperative that we explore new approaches to preventing deadly conflict, mass atrocities and genocide. These new approaches must include how we prioritize the protection of children on the peace and security agenda. As Graça Machel stated: “Our collective failure to protect children must be transformed into an opportunity to confront the problems that cause their suffering” (Machel, 2001). It is possible that our failure to prevent and react to conflicts is directly correlated to our failure to protect children and prevent their deliberate use and abuse in armed conflict. How can we find solutions to prevent deadly conflict and mass atrocities through improvement of our approaches to prevent the use of children as soldiers?