Thursday, February 07, 2008

What's Angelina Jolie Doing In Iraq?

Angelina Jolie was recently in Iraq to improve efforts to help internally displaced refugees. More than 4.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes, 2 million of which to neighboring states. Jolie has also been vocal about boosting the U.S. effort to resettle Iraqi refugees in the United States. A goal has been set of accepting 12,000 Iraqi refugees by September of 2008 but only 375 have been accepted so far.

We should all agree that there is a certain moral responsibility for helping refugees. My question to everyone else: Because of the U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, does the United States bear a greater moral responsibility to accept these refugees than refugees from other countries? If so, what implications does this have, if any, on asylum policy?

1 comment:

Nikki M said...

I think this is an incredibly difficult question! I am inclined to believe that we do have a greater responsibility to offer the Iraqi people safe haven. What makes me uncomfortable about that however, is to value the suffering of Iraqis over the suffering of other survivors of persecution. I would be comfortable accepting more refugees from Iraq if it did not negatively affect the number of refugees we take in from other countries.

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