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Informative Essay: Ishmael Beah As A Child Soldier

1422 Words6 Pages

Imagine yourself as a child soldier. You, a tiny young child being forced with weapons in your bare hands. You hear the loud cries of children and the screaming of fellow child comrades. Sweat rolls down your face. Your commander, shouting and yelling for you to get on the battlefield. The pressure is on. One extremely scared boy named Ishmael Beah had faced this traumatizing experience. Ishmael Beah was a child soldier from Sierra Leone that had entered the United States in 1998. At age 11, there was a major civil war going on and Ishmael Beah was forced to fight in this devastating war. Around the world, about 40% of armed forces use children and shape them up into child soldiers. These children are under a lot of pressure into fighting in the war and have no idea what to do. Even if they tried to escape, they would have neither food nor families to protect them or give …show more content…

“While the number of conflicts involving child soldiers has dropped since 2004 from [age] 27 to 15, human-rights experts estimate that more than 200,000 children worldwide are still being used as combatants, usually against their will.” (Gettleman, Jeffrey). This is a large number of children worldwide who are forced into fighting in these dangerous and treacherous wars. Child soldier commanders are using these children against their will to fight wars and commit war crimes these children wouldn’t even imagine of committing. “The recruiters of child soldiers also use drugs and alcohol to make children more compliant and to enable them to commit acts they would not ordinarily commit.” (Child Soldiers Should Be Prosecuted). This shows that child soldiers are not responsible for their actions as they are fed drugs or given alcohol. As they are either drunk or mentally affected, they have no idea what they are

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The Struggles During Wartime The sierra Leone child soldier survivor Ishmael Beah. He had to deal with the separation of his family at twelve-years old, exposure to guns, violence and starvation,but, the worst of all was when he had to become a killer. One of the many struggles Beah had to deal with when he was a little kid was the exposure to gun and violence.

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First of all, child soldiers go to extremes for such little things like having to ask for thing to be given to them. In the book by Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone, an actual child soldier who is now rehabilitated shared his experiences through the war in Sierra Leone. It says, “We placed a bucket over the cook’s head and pushed him around the kitchen until he burned his hand on a hot boiling pot and agreed to put more milk in our tea,” (Beah, 2007). This demonstrates how dangerous they can be to innocent people, even those that are trying to help. They hurt those no matter what, for their own desires and sometimes they just do this for their own entertainment.

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In the article “Should Child Soldiers be Prosecuted for their Crimes?” it states, “‘... this principle might mitigate the responsibility of a child soldier who was forcibly recruited and forced, under threat of harm, to commit war crimes,’ ICRC adviser Young said”(Johannesburg). This shows that sometimes child soldiers are forced into committing a war crime which is illegal. And it would be very unfair if child soldiers were prosecuted because it is their commanders that are pushing them and forcing them to do such acts. It isn’t the child 's fault because they don’t know or understand what is happening and they don’t know they are doing something wrong because the leader told them to do it.

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