Refugee Suffering: Complementary By Angelina Jolie

“A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary”

Angelina Jolie, in her January 2015 New York Times article “A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary”, argues that the United Nations and other developed countries should take actions and help Syrians to end the war. Angelina Jolie claims that Syrian refugees have been witnessing brutality, violence, struggling to survive. The children can’t go to school; a lot of Syrians lost their members of the family by being shot, raped or tortured. In order to stop the war and help Syrian refugees to find peace and calm we have to defend them and provide necessary things such as food, healthcare, work, so they can start living as normal people without worrying again. In her article Angelina Jolie

tries to show the audience a real picture of living as a refugee since she was there and a witness to all the situations she was telling her audience about. Angelina Jolie’s position is that the international community such as the United Nations has to find a solution for a peace settlement in Syrian civil war. To provide Syrians with food, shelter, education, health care and work is not enough, we also have to defend them and give them the opportunity to live on their land safely. Overall Angelina Jolie effectively argues that “the international community as a whole has to find a path to a peace settlement.” (Jolie, 44)
Angelina Jolie begins her article by revealing that she has visited the Syrian refugees several times. She describes the desperate situation of how millions of people are displaced by witnessing brutality. Next she begins to introduce the personal stories of the Syrian families which she met when she visited their camps. She describes how they witness brutality, violence, the stories of suffering and death, rape. (Jolie, 44) At this point Angelina Jolie begins to offer a solution: she claims the only reason to end this war is to involve international community to help to fight against the problem with brutality, violence, rape, the stories of suffering and death. “We also have to defend the in the refugee camps of the Middle East, and the ruined ghost towns of Syria.” (Jolie, 45)
According to a “Time Magazine” article Angelina Jolie has been a tireless advocate for refugees around the world since 2001.

Back in 2001 while shooting “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia” movie, Angelina Jolie became aware of the people suffering in the war-torn country - “my eyes started to open,” she would later say (O’Hanlon, D2). That experience gave her a better understanding of a worldwide humanitarian crisis which led Angelina Jolie to contact the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In her essay “A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary”, Angelina Jolie claims that she had visited Iraq five times and witnesses suffering, which she had never seen before: people with no home, unspeakable brutality, struggling to survive, violence, children are out of school, poverty (Jolie,

44).
Angelina Jolie uses ethos, pathos and logos in her essay to engage her audience to pay more attention to what’s happening in the other part of the world.

The audience knows Angelina Jolie as an excellent actress. She is using her celebrity influence to push for worldwide action toward the Syrian refugee crisis through emotional articles, essays through newspapers, magazines to share her experience with the audience. Angelina Jolie spent time with a Syrian refugee family during a humanitarian trip and said that the conflict in Syria has "created a wave of human suffering." Syrians are suffering from the bombs, chemical weapons, rape and massacres (Jolie, 44). For example, she mentioned a story in her essay “A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary”a family of eight children with no parents, their father had been killed and mother was taken by ISIS (Jolie, 44). Angelina Jolie is very emotional when it comes to the fight against the refugee crisis, in her article “A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary” she recalls the stories which she heard from the Syrian refugees which made her speechless and very emotional toward helping these refugees to raise the issue to the world and helping them to defend the country and resolve the refugee crisis (Jolie, 45). Angelina Jolie evokes – “ How can you speak when a women your own age looks you in the eye and tells you that her whole family was killed in front of her, and that she now lives alone in a tent and has minimal

food rations?”(Jolie, 44) Angelina Jolie also uses logos to show the evidence of how Syria's neighboring countries help Syrian migrants and provide them with shelter and food (O’Hanlon, D3). She argues that it’s not enough to provide Syrian refugees with food and shelter in other countries if they can’t return to their lands and live peacefully. She encourages the United Nations and other communities to fight against the refugee crisis and find a solution to defend their country so they could stay where they were born. "We cannot donate our way out of the crisis, we cannot solve it simply by taking in refugees, we have to find a diplomatic route to end the conflict," she said, asking the U.N. Security Council to visit the region and pleading for "long-term solutions" to resolving conflicts. (Rodgers, Gritten, Offer, Asare, 23)
In Angelina Jolie’s article “A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary” she inspires the audience to fight for humans rights, defend Syrian refugees and provide them with food, shelter, education, health care, and work. Angelina Jolie encourages the United Nations and other International Communities to find a better solution to provide the Syrian refugees to live peacefully (Jolie, 45). Since then, a dozen groups have been formed to help Syrian and other refugees with food, shelter and health care. There are many well-established charity organizations helping the thousands of migrants flooding into Europe to escape from violence or the brutal oppression of dictatorship in Syria. The big charity groups are well-known: “UNHCR, Unicef, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, the International Red Cross and Save the Children.” But there are other smaller groups doing incredible work every day. There are six groups that help Syrians every day: “Migrant Offshore Aid Station”, this charity exists to save children with a fleet of rescue boats patrolling the Mediterranean to save migrants lost at sea. “Refugees Welcome” is a German nonprofit that matches’ people with spare rooms with refugees in need of housing. “The Worldwide Tribe” in Calais is a group of social activists that documents stories in migrant camps. “Small Projects” Istanbul provides classes, cultural enrichment, and scholarships to Syrian children in Turkey. The “Karam Foundation” is a U.S.-based charity that works in Turkey is also focused on educational opportunities for Syrian children, and currently raising funds to rebuild schools in Syria. “Hand in Hand for Syria” is one of the few organizations that directly provide aid on the ground in Syria, including food, clothing, water, sanitation and crucial medical assistance to help people to stay in Syria instead of fleeing to another country. “Hand in Hand for Syria” is the best organization which fits Angelina Jolie’s proposal to defend a country to find a path to a peace settlement so the Syrian refugees can stay in their lands and live peacefully (Goyette, 18-21).