The complex and brutal conflict in Syria has defied the best efforts of peace negotiators and humanitarian officials for more than five years, but a new group of luminaries is weighing in on a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives: celebrities.

More than two dozen actors, singers and other prominent people have signed a petition urging the Nobel Prize committee to award its 2016 Peace Prize to a group of volunteer rescue workers toiling in cities across the war-torn country. The move draws attention to both the horror of the conflict and the growing willingness of well-known Americans to adopt it as a cause célèbre.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syria Civil Defense, are a group of volunteer emergency workers who rush to the scene of airstrikes in civilian areas of cities like Aleppo, which was once the country’s largest but is now divided between rebel groups and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. His central government has rained bombs on citizens for years, and the White Helmets say they have pulled more than 60,000 people alive from the rubble.