FORA.tv Speaker - Ishmael Beah

Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. When he was eleven, Ishmael's life, along with the lives of millions of other Sierra Leoneans, was derailed by the outbreak of a brutal civil war. After his parents and two brothers were killed, Ishmael was recruited to fight as a child soldier. He was thirteen. He fought for almost three years before he was removed from the army by UNICEF and placed in a rehabilitation home. In 1998, Ishmael came to live with an American family in New York City. He completed high school and was subsequently accepted to Oberlin College. Throughout his undergraduate education, Ishmael continued his advocacy work to bring attention to the plight of child soldiers around the world, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, serving on a UN panel with Secretary General Kofi Annan and discussing the issue with dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton. In May 2004, Ishmael completed his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and won Oberlin's Dainne Vruels Fiction Prize for his story At Noon. He is currently completing a book about his experiences in the war, which will be published by Farrar Straus and Giroux.