(TakePart) – Ishmael Baeh was 11 when his country, Sierra Leone, fell into a brutal civil war. At 12, he was separated from his family and abducted by a government militia. It trained him to kill and kill often—in the most inhumane ways possible. In his memoir, A Long Way Home, Baeh wrote that killing became “as easy as drinking water.” The savagery continued till UNICEF intervened and took Baeh and other child soldiers away from their commander, offering rehabilitation and a life free from guns. Some 300,000 children around the world like Baeh have been swept up into a life of violence, according to UNICEF. They are used as instruments of war; boys are trained in combat, and young girls are forced into marriage or sexually exploited.
