Ishmael Beah Essay

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Ishmael Beah has given himself to the issue of exploited children in armed conflict and has taken on an active role in its elimination. “You can’t understand a war without having a human context,” said Beah to the Webster University community who had gathered to hear him speak. “I wanted to write this book to put a human face to the story.” A Long Way Gone chronicles Beah’s life in Sierra Leone before, during, and after the civil war. Beah became a child soldier at the ripe age of 13 and would commit terrible acts against humanity. But it also tells of how Beah was rescued, rehabilitated, and eventually adopted by an American family. It is this book and the story it tells that has made Beah’s face synonymous with the fight to end the use of child soldiers. “He [Ishmael Beah] not only lived through that but he was part of it,” said Cassandra Siebert who is a freshman studying human rights at Webster. “You hear statistics everyday but this is one name, one face, and an actual full story. It gives people a more personal view.” This personal view is what Beah had aimed for. He spoke of human context and how important it was for people to have in order to understand anything in the world. His book gave people in the United States that human context. It was this human context that allowed people to realize and comprehend the wars going on in Africa. “We are trying to promote awareness and discussion,” said Professor Paul Moriarty of the department of Philosophy. “Sometimes in the U.S. we tend to be a little too isolated, we don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world.” Americans tend to be self involved and have little to no knowledge about international happenings. This makes American society weak and ignorant. To combat this universities like Webster encourage global involvement not just through study abroad
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