Sasha Brigante

Vow of Silence

December 22, 2009

Child Soldiers and Children’s Rights

“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”

“Because there is a war.”

“Did you witness some of the fighting?”

“Everyone in the country did.”

“You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”

“Yes, all the time.”

“Cool.”

“You should tell us about it sometime.”

“Yes, sometime.”

I quote this excerpt from Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. I have no doubt in my mind that the reoccurring issue of child soldiers is the children’s rights issue that is in most dire need of our attention. I am passionate about this topic and all the things we can do together, as one, to try and fix this issue—even if it only means to the best of our ability.

The children’s rights issue that needs our most urgent attention is that of child soldiers for reasons that would be too plentiful, if I were to list them all. Hundreds of thousands of children under the age of eighteen are child soldiers, and there are child soldiers currently being used in twenty-one on-going and recent armed conflicts in almost every region of the world—not limited to one in particular [according to Human Rights Watch]. I write about this issue because after reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, I was not only disgusted at the fact that there are children my age, fifteen years old, living in harsh conditions and being economically and socially pressured, sometimes abducted, into these armed groups, but surprised at how with the help of UNICEF, Beah’s life changed completely for the better. Ishmael Beah, at thirteen years old, had two options in life: “to kill or be killed.” In the end, with the help of many important individuals in his life, he won the greatest prize of all, his humanity back. I would like to live in a world where child soldiers are a thing of the past, as opposed to a trend that is slowly increasing as time goes by, destroying, and sometimes killing the lives of the most precious and innocent of children—who never got a true shot at life.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier shows that with a little help, the life of a child soldier can be restored, which is why this children’s rights issue needs full participation and the most urgent attention. Towards the beginning of the novel, Ishmael, his brother Junior, and a friend decide to go to Mattru Jong for a talent show, yet on their way there, they learn that the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) and the Sierra Leone Armed Forces have attacked their home village and are forcing young men, especially boys, to join in their militia. At this point, Ishmael is a mere twelve-year-old boy who comes across and must be witness to bloody scenes of dead and rotting bodies scattered along the countryside of Sierra Leone. There is one situation in particular that Ishmael had to endure, where he had to watch an old man get killed by the RUF. He says, “I turned my face to the ground. My knees started trembling and my heartbeat grew faster and louder. When I looked back, the old man was circling around like a dog trying to catch a fly on its tail. He kept screaming, ‘My head! My brains!’ The rebels laughed at him.” Keep in mind, this is only one situation Ishmael experiences. At one point when there is a rebel attack, Ishmael runs into a bush and because he did not look back, his brother, Junior, was taken, and never seen again. Later, Ishmael finds his friend, Saidu, has died enigmatically after being petrified from seeing a group of rebels in the forest. Thereafter, Ishmael confronts a man named Gasemu, who tells him that his family is just over the hill. Upon hearing this, Ishmael sees the village is raging with horrid fires—the rebels arrive first and they are too late. Ishmael hurries to the small home his family was living in, and sees it is blackened, and riddled with ashes. His family did not survive. Later, the boys go to Yele, in search of safety. Lieutenant Jabati takes in the children, where soon after, they are handed AK-47s and are told the killing is “the highest service you can perform for your country.” They continue to brainwash Ishmael and the others, by saying while they practice stabbing banana trees, to imagine the rebels, the rebels who killed their parents, and the rebels who are “responsible for everything that has happened to you.” Ishmael goes to his first battle thereafter and kills his first man, going on to say, “I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people.” This was Ishmael’s existence for the next two years of not only his life, but his childhood. One day, UNICEF workers pull up in a truck, and take Ishmael and a few other soldiers with them to Freetown. With drugs, violence, and killing as a strong addiction at this point in Ishmael’s life, he suffers through an extremely difficult withdrawal. Thankfully, with the help of a nurse, Esther, who constantly repeats to Ishmael that “It’s not your fault”, he is able to reconnect with his lost childhood. He is even invited to speak in the US about his experience in the war under the program, “Children Associated with War (CAW).” Upon his return to Sierra Leone, after Johnny Paul Koroma has announced that he is the new president, chaos is unleashed. Ishmael calls Laura, a mother figure whom he met in New York during his visit to the US, and she says it would be okay if he stayed with her. Although it is not easy, he finally makes it to Guinea, where he will then travel to New York. It is true that he is now living in a foreign city, going to an even more foreign city, but one thing is also true: Ishmael Beah will never be a child soldier again. And that is all that truly matters.

The point of recapping on Ishmael’s true story as a child soldier is not to simply restate his childhood, but rather point out all the hardships he has endured. Now take everything he went through. Take every emotion. Every gruesome scene he bore witness to. Every person he was forced to kill. Every person he knew who died in the war from rebels, most of the time, by other child soldiers. Take all this and apply it to the hundreds of thousands of child soldiers in war right now, at this very moment. I’m still trying to understand how we can live in a world where the lives of these children are being destroyed on a daily basis. So many children who could have done so many great things with their life. One never knows what that child could have amounted to. One will never be able to tell what would have come from his or her life. And what makes this issue worse is that it can be stopped, and I am a firm believer of this. The only reason why children are more vulnerable to military recruitment is because of their emotional and physical immaturity. Children are easily manipulated, and when placed in a situation where they can feel power and strength from killing someone after being brainwashed, they will kill. Unfortunately, it is what they are trained to do. Others join because they are being held down by the chains of poverty or because lack of work, and even lack of educational opportunities. If more was done to educate and raise awareness on the topic of child soldiers, it would make a world of difference. More should certainly be done to remove soldiers from the war if they currently are fighting in one.

Thankfully, I have picked up the concept of gratitude and to be grateful for all that you have thanks to my personal hero, Jason Mraz. I can truthfully say that I am grateful for all the opportunities my life has presented me with. I accept every new situation with open arms, and embrace it. When I read a story like that of Ishmael’s and his life as a child soldier, I am caught off guard and in total shock at the atrocities he saw, was forced to commit, and had to live through. It makes me want to stand up for this cause even more and raise awareness about it. To improve the situation for child youth, I can speak on the issue of soldiers to hopefully inspire others to help. I can support the efforts of the UN to prevent the use of child soldiers. I can sign appeals that do not allow the use of child soldiers. I can even raise funds that support rehabilitation centers to help child soldiers be lead astray from their harmful lives. I am committed most to this topic and am eager to help. So let us break the silence with this issue, before it’s too late.