"A Long Way Gone"

This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s.  Children have become the soldiers of choice.  In more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers.  Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
       What does war look like through the eyes of a child soldier?  How does one become a killer?  How does one stop?  Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives.  But it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived.
       In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a powerfully gripping story: At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.  At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and, finally, to heal.
       This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Solutions!!!

1. Journalists must stand up for their colleagues.  Because of the number of journalists being killed, many of them have become too scared to do anything to help their friends and their profession.  The general feeling among the journalists is that they must be careful about what they print because anything sensitive could provoke violent action.  As long as they are walking on eggshells while writing their stories, they will not be able to publicly stand up for their fellow journalists.  If they unite in solidarity then they will have strength in numbers and then the actions of the government can begin to change.
source: http://www.article19.org/data/files/pdfs/reports/no-justice-for-journalists-in-ukraine-belarus-and-russia.pdf
2. Human right activists and the Russian population must stand up for the journalists in the country and against the injustice that is taking place against them.  In 2006, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya sparked an international outrage.  People all over Europe made it known that unjust killings such as these were not going to be tolerated.  This kind of action needs to take place after every outrageous murder of brave journalists.  If the people do this then it will put pressure on the Russian government and make it harder for them to get away with these crimes.
source: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=19735
3. Legislation must eventually be passed to protect journalists' rights.  Possibly one of the most effective ways of protecting journalists is passing a law that will allow journalists to publish whatever the want and promising them protection from any ensuing violent action.  The knowledge that they can write whatever they want and not having to worry about awful consequences would help their medium flourish.  Although Russia may not be ready for such legislation now it must be a goal of the people and the government to set up law protecting their journalists.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/opinion/8188872/Why-are-Russian-journalists-being-killed.html