Slowly, however, things began to change for Beah. With the friendship and guidance of one of the nurses, he managed to overcome his drug addiction and his predilection for violence and finally began sharing and coming to terms with his war experiences. His progress was such that he was asked to become a spokesperson for the center, representing it to outside donors and agencies. He was chosen to go to the United Nations in New York for a conference on issues affecting children around the world. There, he met Laura Simms, a facilitator at the conference. Before Beah left, Simms gave him her number and address and told him to keep in touch. Little did Beah know then that Simms would eventually become his adoptive mother. Back in Sierra Leone, UNICEF was unable to locate Beah's immediate family members, who most likely had perished in the war. However, he was reunited with an uncle who lived in Freetown and was welcomed with open arms by that family. Beah moved in with them and began attending school regularly for the first time in years.

Finally, it seemed, Beah had escaped the war for good. But the war--which had been confined to the villages and rural areas--followed him to the capital. Soon after moving in with his uncle's family, Beah awoke one spring morning in 1997 to the sound of gunshots. The radio announced that a contingent of the army and the RUF had united and overthrown the civilian government. Over the next months, Freetown turned into a war zone. The united soldiers and rebels, or "Sobels," as they were called, began blowing up bank vaults and occupying schools and university campuses. Armed men looted most of the food from shops and markets, leaving the population on the brink of starvation. Groups of gunmen roamed the streets raping and killing people at random. For most of the city dwellers, venturing out of the house meant risking death. For Beah, there was the added fear that if he was captured he would be forced to become a soldier again. All the progress he had struggled so hard to achieve over the past year was on the brink of disintegrating.

He decided to take action. "I had to leave, because I was afraid that if I stayed in Freetown any longer, I was going to end up being a soldier again or my former army friends would kill me if I refused. Some friends who had undergone rehabilitation with me had already rejoined the army." He managed to make a collect call to Simms in New York and asked her if he could come and live with her if he managed to get out of the country. She agreed. Beah succeeded in sneaking across the border to Guinea and made it to Conakry, the capital. The rest, as they say, is history. Beah ended up in New York, where Simms adopted him. He went on to finish school and graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.

Most child soldiers, however, are not so lucky. Attempting to emerge from war with no education and no economic prospects, often stigmatized and shunned by communities because of their participation in war and with no family or social support, many children relapse into soldiering, perpetuating the cycle of war and sowing the seeds of violence for generations to come. Since its publication, Beah's book has become something of a sensation: It has reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list and has been featured by Starbucks, which is selling the book in its cafes across the country--and, soon, around Britain. While the attention the memoir has generated attests to an emerging interest in and concern for the plight of child soldiers, this interest also indicates a shift, if not a decline, in moral sensibility. We are no longer shocked by children being killed in war but by children killing in war.

Yet even the moral indignation aroused by the phenomenon of child soldiering has not been enough to stop, or even contain, the trend. So far, international efforts to halt the exploitation of children as soldiers have been woefully ineffective. While the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)--which bans child soldiering--is the most widely ratified convention in the world, many signatory states pay lip service to it while continuing to recruit and exploit child soldiers. And while these states as well as nonstate armed groups are largely responsible for the continuing spread of child soldiering, developed countries also share the blame. The United States has played a particularly shameful role in blocking almost every international effort aimed at curtailing child soldiering. Not only is it one of two countries (along with Somalia) that have refused to ratify the CRC; in recent years it has opposed international efforts to limit the illicit trade in small arms, the very trade that is fueling so many of the conflicts in which child soldiers are involved. P.W. Singer points to the 2001 UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms as an example. At the conference, the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied the Bush Administration to oppose any UN measures to make international small arms sales more transparent. How regulations on the international trade in small arms could affect Americans' right to tote guns--the NRA's fixation--is inexplicable.

The International Criminal Court, established in 2002 to prosecute those responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, is another international instrument with the potential to counter the exploitation of child soldiers. The ICC's mandate treats the use of child soldiers as a war crime and allows for the prosecution and punishment of armed group leaders who exploit children. In its crusade to exempt itself from any sort of international accountability, however, the United States has been rabidly opposed to the ICC, going out of its way to impugn the court's credibility.

Speaking in Paris at a recent conference on child soldiers, Beah insisted that "no one is born violent. No child in Africa, Latin America or Asia wants to be part of war." Beah's message is yet to be heard. Until underlying causes such as poverty and the spread of small arms are addressed, and as long as those who exploit child soldiers go unpunished, children are destined to remain a fixed feature of warfare, helping to perpetuate instability and violence in the developing world. Ironically, at a time when many intellectuals fret over "just war" theory--the waging of war according to moral principles--the use of child soldiers is more widespread than ever. Things are awry indeed when society's youngest and most vulnerable citizens are made to fight the wars of adults and are turned into murderous aggressors in the process.

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