Angelina & The UNHCR
Angelina has been a goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency since 2001. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.
Angelina saw this as a chance to utilize her fame to help those less fortunate: refugees all over the world. Read more about her work here.
Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide crises while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in poverty-stricken and widely mined Cambodia. She was deeply affected by these experiences and eventually turned to USA for UNHCR for more information on international trouble spots. In the coming months she agreed to visit different refugee camps around the world to learn more about the situation and the conditions on the ground.
In February, Jolie went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed how shocked she was by these first missions. She then flew to Cambodia in June for two weeks, mainly concentrating on the land mine situation there, and later in August for ten days visited refugee camps in Pakistan which primarily host Afghan refugees; responding to an international UNHCR emergency appeal she decided to donate $1 million for Afghan refugees. She insisted on covering all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits.
Impressed by her interest and devotion in the subject, UNHCR named her a Goodwill Ambassador on August 27, 2001 at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva. During a press conference she explained her motives for joining the refugee agency: "We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don't believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to believe that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us."
Since being appointed ambassador, Angelina has visited over 20 countries and met with countless of people. She has also kept journals of a lot of her trips, and several are available online to read:
Stats
- Site Opened: September 25, 2001
- Fans Listed: 17724, from 199 countries
- Fans Pending: 46
- Last Updated: 27th March 2008
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