ABSTRACT
The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict (ESVC) marked the culmination of a two-year-long process for the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). At the centre of the furore was Angelina Jolie – actor, screenwriter, director, and UN Special Envoy – who co-hosted the Summit with then-UK Foreign Minister William Hague. This chapter reflects on celebrities as heroes in the realm of humanitarianism and international security, using Jolie’s involvement in the ESVC Summit as its lens and tracing her rise to heroic status as well as its likely implications, both intended and unintended. The purpose of the chapter is not to query whether Jolie herself performs her humanitarian role well. Rather, the chapter explores which structures and individuals benefit from her work as a humanitarian hero and how she can shape political discourse about humanitarianism and issues like ESVC. The chapter argues that Jolie and the Summit as a microcosm reveal that the phenomenon of celebrity activism runs the risk of creating a distraction that allows governments and publics to ignore the systemic problems that continue to produce human suffering.
