When UNICEF celebrates the 18th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child today, it will appoint Ishmael Beah as an Ambassador. This 26-year-old Sierra Leonean, who now lives in the US joins the ranks of such famous names as Audrey Hepburn, Lord Richard Attenborough, David Beckham, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Chan, Whoopi Goldberg, Sir Roger Moore, Nana Mouskouri, Youssou N’Dour, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon and Roger Federer among others.
UNICEF’s ambassadors are usually famous people. The organization noted some years ago that celebrities attract attention, which places them in a position to turn that focus on the world’s children and the issues that affect them. Because many celebrities have some political clout, they make excellent lobbyists and can usually bring about change. Because many celebrities are imitated also, their identification with a cause ensures additional advocacy.
But who is Ishmael Beah? What is his claim to fame? Why has UNICEF chosen to appoint him ambassador?
In February this year, a book, titled A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, was released for sale. It was written by Ishmael Beah, who had successfully made the transition from child soldier to student, youth activist and now author. In an interview with USA Today, published on the day his book was released, Beah spoke of how at 12 years old, he became familiar with the AK-47, killed “too many people to count, smoked marijuana and sniffed ‘brown-brown’, a combination of cocaine and gunpowder”. Sierra Leone was in the midst of a civil war and Beah was forced to become a child soldier in that country’s army after his parents were killed by rebels.
After about two years, he was placed in rehabilitation where, he said, he “struggled with the physical withdrawal from drugs and the emotional withdrawal from the people [the soldiers who had stolen his childhood] to whom he had become attached”. He was later selected to talk about his experiences at the UN headquarters and it was in New York that he had the chance meeting with the woman, a childless, divorced Jew named Laura Simms, who gave him back his childhood. Some two years after their chance meeting, Simms facilitated his move to New York where he graduated from high school, obtained a degree in political science at university and at the time of the interview was applying to do a Masters degree in fine arts.
Beah may not have achieved any of this without Simms, who never formally adopted the child she called “son of my heart”. However, even with her help, he could not have done it if he did not have the drive and ambition to change his life.
He told USA Today that he still has dreams of being tortured and killed, things he did in his former life. And he feels that put in the same situation anyone is capable of doing the things he did. “It’s part of our humanity to lose our humanity and also eventually to regain it.”
Beah, with his dark past, is not from the traditional mould of the UNICEF ambassador. But the atrocities committed against children in Sierra Leone did not end there. In other parts of Africa, today, where there are civil wars, there are other Beahs, toting AK-47s or other heavy artillery and fighting their peers, their neighbours, their relatives. Beah’s shining future is something they can aspire to.
UNICEF’s mission is to ensure every child has the right to health, education, equality and protection.