Academy Award Winner Angelina Jolie, known for playing strong action heroines, is not just a heroine in movies but also in real life. Jolie is notorious for her humanitarian efforts. She doesn’t just give money to charities or talk about the issues she believes in; instead, she actually steps out from her glamorous Hollywood life and puts her words into action.
The actress braved winds and torrential rain to see for herself the situation in a Syrian Refugee Camp in Lebanon last Tuesday, and she called it ‘tragic and shameful’ that a peaceful resolution in Syria seems so far away.
Lebanon, which borders Syria, hosts over a million of the latter’s people who have fled the ongoing conflict in their homeland between rebels, extremists, and the Assad regime.
Angelina Jolie, in her capacity as a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, went to the camp in Zahleh, Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, and held a press conference to address the issue. She said that she had hoped to be in Syria instead aiding the refugees to return to their homes on what is the fifth year of the conflict since rebels rose to unseat President Bashar Al Assad.
She said that it is “tragic and shameful that we seem to be so far from that point.” She also stated that it is the responsibility of the international community to resolve the war in the middle east, since after all it is the root cause of the current Refugee Crisis in Europe.
“We cannot manage the world through aid relief in the place of diplomacy and political solutions,” Angelina Jolie staunchly proclaimed.
According to the United Nations , there are currently more people displaced due to conflict globally than during World War II.
To date, half of Syria’s twenty three million population before the conflict began has been displaced, five million of them have fled their nation, with many of them making the dangerous journey to Europe.
There is hope though; a UN backed ceasefire was declared on February 27 and appears to be holding. Still there are individual clashes, and the ceasefire does not cover UN-designated terrorists organizations who still control large swaths of territory in Syria.
Hopefully we will be able to reach a resolution.
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