Hundreds of thousands of children are recruited and used for armed warfare every year under fear of death.   Raising public awareness of the human rights atrocities associated with this issue and urging officials to withdraw support to countries who knowingly recruit children, acclaimed author and former child soldier Ishmael Beah will join a panel discussion to call for immediate action to end the recruitment of children for combat across the globe.

Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980 and before he moved to the United States in 1998 was used for warfare. Beah's book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a memoir of his personal experiences as a child solider in the Sierra Leonean Army and is currently number four on the New York Times Best Sellers List.

Beah will join panelists: Jo Becker, Children's Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch; Bernadine Dohrn, Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Director and founder of the Children and Family Justice Center and moderator, Lynette Jackson, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and African American Studies at UIC and Chair of UIC's International Studies Program.

The panel is being co-sponsored by UIC International Studies Program, Human Rights Watch, Project Focus, UIC African American Studies Program and UIC Honors College .