Event focuses on children in war

by Tim Shenk

Ishmael Beah, children’s rights activist, spoke of life as a child soldier. / Nicole Schilit

Ishmael Beah, a children’s rights activist and former child soldier, headlined a Nov. 18 panel discussion on child soldiers, “Children on the Front Line.”

Beah wrote an acclaimed memoir, A Long Way Gone, about his experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s civil war. Beah and other panelists spoke about the current state of children in armed conflict and the considerable progress that has been made on this issue since the early 1990s, when Beah became a 12-year-old soldier in Sierra Leone’s army.

One milestone was the adoption in 2000 of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, an international treaty that raised the minimum age of soldiers from 15 to 18. More recently, on Aug. 4, 2009, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1882, creating a mechanism to monitor and report sexual violence against children in war.

Efforts such as these have decreased the number of countries using child soldiers from about 30 to 15, according to Jo Becker, a panelist who is children’s rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

“For those of us who’ve been involved in this work for a while, it’s really encouraging to see how far we’ve come,” Becker said.

In a dialogue with Aldo Civico, director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution, Beah reflected on how far he has come personally since his days as a teenage soldier.

Beah described how his childhood ended when he fled his home during the war. He became a child soldier, and the social fabric he had grown up with was destroyed.

“A place where once you would not raise your voice to an adult became a place where you would shoot that adult,” Beah recalled.

However, Beah said he believes that child soldiers such as himself can overcome the trauma of war. After emigrating to the United States and completing high school and college, Beah wrote A Long Way Gone to show that child soldiers are not lost causes.

“People used to call us the ‘Lost Generation,’ meaning that if you had been through this war, nothing could be done with you,” he said. “I wanted to show people the possibility that people came come through this.”

Since publishing his memoir, Beah has worked as an advocate for other young people caught in the midst of war. Among other things, he serves on the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee. He and Becker traveled to Washington to advocate for an end to U.S. military aid to eight governments that use child soldiers.

Other panelists included John McNee, Canada’s ambassador to the U.N., and Lt. Col. Ronnie Harleston, military adviser from the Permanent Mission of Sierra Leone to the U.N. Elisabeth Lindenmayer, director of SIPA’s U.N. studies program, was the master of ceremonies.

The panel discussion was followed by a reception that benefited Play31, an international organization that helps build peace and community through children’s soccer games. More information is available at play31.org.

The event was hosted by SIPA’s U.N. Studies Program Working Group and Human Rights Working Group.

Published in RightsNews Volume 28, no. 1, February, 2010.
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