Angelina Jolie has served as a special envoy for the United Nations for many years now and she has visited Iraq 5 times since 2007, but what she saw and heard on January 25th, left her speechless. She shared her experience in a New York Times editorial published on Tuesday, January 27th. In the editorial she states, “I have seen nothing like the suffering I’m witnessing now.” Jolie visited the Khanke Camp for Internally Displaced People, where she witnessed dire living conditions and listened as refugees, young and old, shared their tales of horror. Family members killed, their murders witnessed by loved ones; daughters taken hostage and repeatedly raped; children left orphaned, older siblings trying their best to care for the younger ones. The brutal inhumanity is incomprehensible especially when you consider there are more than 51 million displaced people worldwide. The number refugees and their needs are vastly different than anything the United Nations refugee agency has experienced before. Jolie writes, ” When the United Nations refugee agency was created after World War II, it was intended to help people return to their home after conflict. It wasn’t created to feed, year after year, people who may never go home, whose children will be born stateless, and whose countries may never see peace.”
Currently, Syrian refugees outnumber all others around the world. There are millions of Syrian refugees in Iraq. They make up 10% of the total population of Jordan. In Lebanon, 1 out of every 4 are Syrian. These countries have long since hit their capacity for providing sufficient humanitarian aid for these displaced people. Fewer and fewer resources are available to assist these kinds of numbers. The United Nations resources are severely underfunded.
Angelina Jolie is calling on the international community to take action. Her compassion for these people, and her ability to speak for the voiceless millions, is vital to their survival. These people need clean water, food, shelter, and healthcare, now. In the future, they will also require assistance in finding a home country, a means to provide for their families, and ongoing medical care. Is our world community able and willing to assist them for the long term? Time will tell, but for now, just keeping them alive and safe is daily challenge.
Thank you Angelina Jolie for drawing our attention to this alarming situation and challenging our global society to assist these less fortunate individuals during their time of need.
