Angelina Jolie +

GENEVA, October 4 (UNHCR) – UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie on Tuesday urged the international community to scale up its efforts to deal with the crisis in the Horn of Africa, saying the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees depended on it.

In a speech in Geneva to the annual meeting of UNHCR’s governing Executive Committee, or ExCom, the celebrated Hollywood actress described the situation in Somalia and surrounding countries as “the humanitarian crisis of a generation” and said further help was urgently needed.

“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she said. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”

Her remarks came as news reports from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, said dozens of people had been killed in a suicide bomb blast near a government ministry.

Jolie also urged the Executive Committee’s member states to remain committed to helping the world’s refugees despite the global environment of increasing economic and financial pressures.

“The challenges that UNHCR confronts to provide for refugees are immense and growing. The rich countries of the world are increasingly feeling budgetary constraints at home. They face pressures to reduce rather than maintain their current and promised levels of aid funding,” she said during her first address to ExCom, which reviews and approves UNHCR’s programmes and budget, advises on protection issues and discusses a wide range of other topics.

“Nevertheless, we hope that these governments will remain committed to the cause of the world’s most vulnerable people, while we recognize and are grateful to them for their generosity,” added Jolie, who also expressed gratitude on Tuesday to countries hosting refugees.

The Goodwill Ambassador also had praise for UNHCR’s committed and dedicated staff and other humanitarian partners. “They operate in some of the world’s most dangerous places, from Somalia to Libya to Afghanistan, in order to reach and help those in need. We thank them for all that they do and the personal risks they take to do it,” she said, while noting the increasing dangers that aid workers face. “We must demand greater respect for the concepts of independence, impartiality, and neutrality in order to ensure the safety and lives of humanitarian workers.”

Jolie was appointed as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in August 2001 and has since conducted more than 40 field visits, including to some of the most remote refugee-hosting regions. On Tuesday, High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres recognized her 10 years of service with the refugee agency by asking her to take on an expanded role for UNHCR as a Special Envoy in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.

“It is indeed my intention, with your agreement, that you will become our Special Envoy mainly in regard to the most dramatic refugee situations that require a lot of advocacy, but also to put them more strongly on the map to mobilize stronger international support,” Guterres told ExCom members in his remarks introducing Jolie.

“We will be asking you to do more and more in this regard and we will all be counting not only with your commitment but also your diplomatic [skills] and your vision and insights on how to help solve some of the most complex problems that we face together with the international community,” he added.

Jolie said her personal experiences with UNHCR “have been moving, sometimes heartbreaking, but always rewarding and unforgettable.” And she had discovered that refugees “are among the most vulnerable and yet the most resilient people on earth.”

UNHCR ceremony honours Yemeni aid group and Angelina Jolie
UNHCR
GENEVA, October 3 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency paid lavish tribute on Monday night to award-winning American actress Angelina Jolie and Yemeni humanitarian aid group Society for Humanitarian Solidarity (SHS) for their outstanding work for refugees over many years.

Before an audience of 800 government officials, diplomats, donors and aid workers, Jolie was recognized for completing 10 years as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, while the founder and 290 staff of SHS received the prestigious Nansen Refugee Award for their live-saving work helping tens of thousands of desperate boat people arriving on the coast of Yemen from the Horn of Africa.

“This award motivates us to increase our effort to helping those who are in need,” said SHS founder Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, while Jolie told the audience, “It is an honour to work on behalf of refugees and I look forward to the next 10 years.”

Lauding Jolie, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said, “She is the very best of the goodwill ambassadors that exist in the humanitarian world.”

It is an honour to work on behalf of refugees and I look forward to the next 10 years.

– UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie

In a slick ceremony presided over by former British politician and broadcast journalist Sir Martin Bell, Norwegian musician Sivert Hoyem warmed up the audience with two songs before a tribute to Angelina Jolie and her work for UNHCR was screened in Geneva’s distinctive 19th Century Bâtiment des Forces Motrices, a former water pumping station on the River Rhone.

“I’m so grateful to the many refugee families that I have had the honour and privilege to spend the last years with. From them I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned to become a better person, a better mother,” Jolie said. “They’ve inspired me by showing me every day the unbreakable strength of the human spirit.”

The actress, who was presented with a gold pin, has visited almost 30 countries worldwide as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador over the past decade, including Afghanistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Malta and Italy this year alone.

In the highlight of the evening, Jolie and Guterres presented the Nansen Refugee Medal to SHS founder Al-Hamairy, whose non-governmental humanitarian organization has since 1995 been helping people fleeing by smugglers’ boats across the Gulf of Aden. SHS also helps needy local communities.

SHS has been particularly busy this year. So far in 2011, more than 60,000 people have made sea crossings to Yemen – as many as the combined number of arrivals in the last three years. It is estimated that at least 120 people drowned trying to make the journey this year.

SHS staff work around the clock to monitor about a third of Yemen’s 2,000 kilometre-long coastline, pick up survivors, provide emergency care and, all too often, bury those who die en route.

“I do think they deserve the recognition of the international community,” said Guterres, while Jolie also paid tribute to the Yemeni aid workers. “The staff of SHS often risk their own lives to save others,” she said, describing their life-saving assistance as “extraordinary.”

Colombian humanitarian and musician Juanes also took part in the tribute, performing two of the songs that have made him a superstar in South America. The Grammy winner has helped spread awareness about the suffering of hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people in his country, including indigenous people. Somali sister band Sweet Rush also performed.

The Nansen Refugee Award was created in 1954 in honour of Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat and politician who in the 1920s became the first international High Commissioner for Refugees.

It is given annually to an individual or organization for outstanding work on behalf of refugees and consists of a commemorative medal and a US$100,000 monetary prize donated by the governments of Switzerland and Norway. The winner can donate spend the funds on a project approved by the Nansen committee.

Past winners include Eleanor Roosevelt, Tanzania’s late President Julius Nyerere, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Graça Machel, late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti and last year’s winner, photographer Alixandra Fazzina. A number of humanitarian organizations, and partners of UNHCR, have also won the award, including the League of Red Cross Societies. Médecins Sans Frontières, Handicap International and the UN Volunteers. In 1986, the Nansen went to the people of Canada.

Monday’s event was supported by the Swiss and Norwegian governments, the Canton of Geneva, the City of Geneva, the IKEA Foundation and the Norwegian Refugee Council, which also helped to organize the presentation ceremony.

She and Brad Pitt have been long-term supporters of HALO, and visited our projects in a number of mine-impacted countries. Their financial support to HALO has run to many hundreds of thousands of pounds, funding humanitarian mineclearance teams in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Kosovo and Afghanistan. This was her first visit to the HQ, and was a chance for a global briefing by senior HALO staff on the current landmine problem.

Guy Willoughby, co-founder and Director of the Trust, said:

It was a great opportunity for us to talk through the projects and also plan our demining priorities for the future – identifying which communities in different countries are most in need of our support.

Angelina Jolie said:

It was a privilege to visit the HALO headquarters and meet their committed staff. In the aftermath of war, HALO’s mineclearing efforts are fundamental to a safe return and community building.

For more information call +44 (0 ) 1848 331100, or visit our website at www.halotrust.org or contact us on press@halotrust.org for additional photographs. Photographs with meta-data are copyright Fiona Willoughby/HALO, and should have that tag. Angelina has asked for all copy, where at all possible, to include our website www.halotrust.org. Thank you.

Angelina Jolie has met with Croatian President Ivo Josipovic to discuss the country’s attempts to remove dangerous landmines.

The UN Goodwill Ambassador arrived in Croatia over the weekend to urge President Josipovic to take decisive action to dispose of landmines still remaining from the country’s civil war in the 1990s.

Jolie and two of her children also attended a performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear while visiting Croatia, according to newspaper Jutarnji List.

The star had been invited to the region by the Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija, who played Gregorovitch in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films.

A source close to Jolie recently suggested that she and partner Brad Pitt have settled down now that their children have grown older.

Jolie’s directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey, which was partially filmed in Bosnia, opens on December 23 in US cinemas.
digital spy

LAMPEDUSA ISLAND, Italy, June 19 (UNHCR) – Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie and UNHCR chief António Guterres met boat people, including unaccompanied minors, on a tiny Italian island on Sunday and remembered those who have lost their lives trying to reach Lampedusa by sea from Africa.

Jolie and Guterres visited the Porta d’Europa – a stone gateway on a headland next to the sea where hundreds of boats have arrived with migrants from North Africa, including refugees and asylum-seekers. More than 40,000 people have risked the Mediterranean crossing on overcrowded boats and reached Lampedusa so far this year. A further 1,500 have died in the attempt.

Guterres appealed on European countries to accept the people coming from Africa, especially those fleeing violence in Libya. “When we have so many conflicts at the gates of Europe, the most important thing a country can do is keep their borders open,” he stressed, while mentioning Italy by name.

The High Commissioner noted that about 18,000 people, including refugees, had reached Lampedusa by boat to date from Libya, while adding that this represented only 2 per cent of the people who had left Libya since conflict erupted there in February.

Jolie, who earlier in the day meet asylum-seekers at two locations in Malta, said she was moved to be at the Porta d’Europa. “It was very moving to stand with the mayor, the priest and the people of Lampedusa at this place, to take a moment of silence while a wreath was laid on a submerged boat on which three people had lost their lives.

“When I think of these people, these families, I try to imagine what would bring someone – for example a mother with children – to make this journey. What kind of a life she must have lived, what she must have suffered, to be brought to a point where her last resort is to step onto an overcrowded rickety boat,” Jolie said.

“What must her life be like that the best alternative is to risk drowning and suffocation . . . only to be brought to a new country where she may be turned away. Sent back to sea,” she said, adding: “Very few of us here today can even begin to understand what kind of painful existence she must have led.”

The award-winning actress and Guterres also both thanked the Italian coastguard for saving many people who were on sinking boats. Jolie had earlier Friday in Valletta praised coastguards in Malta for having “saved thousands of lives over the years” and urged that they receive support from the international community to handle the inflow of migrants by sea.

The VIP visitors also saw reception facilities on Lampedusa and met with unaccompanied minors as well as some new arrivals. Italy has moved most of the boat people to the mainland, but some have been returned to Tunisia. Most of the arrivals have been economic migrants, especially from Tunisia, but some are people in need of international protection, including refugees from sub-Saharan Africa and Libya.

Guterres said it was important that arrivals be moved from the crowded conditions of Lampedusa as soon as possible. He also noted that among those coming to Italy, “there are some people who are becoming a refugee for the second time.”

Meanwhile, he spoke against proposals that Italy revive a policy of pushing back to Africa boats carrying migrants. “My position is clear, it’s not possible to send people back to a civil war situation.”

Before joining High Commissioner Guterres in Lampedusa, Jolie had visited Malta, which has also been a destination for people fleeing North Africa by boat. She visited Lyster Barracks, a former Royal Air Force facility and now a detention centre for asylum-seekers, many of whom have fled the violence in Libya. They include Somalis, Ethiopians and others from sub-Saharan Africa.

“Malta has saved many lives, but it is the daily conditions on the ground that are of most concern,” Jolie said in Malta on Sunday morning. “We’ve spent time today speaking with the government and will spend more time talking about how, together, we can make the conditions more humane, especially for the children.

“We’ve spoken about our shared concerns about making sure asylum claims are processed as quickly as possible so no-one is sitting in a prison-like situation and waiting on a decision about their status,” she added.

Many of the people Jolie met in the barracks told her that they had been working in Libya to make money to remit to their families back home. One man referred to Libya as the heart of Africa, where they were able to work. “Now it is on fire and Africa is crying,” he said.

The people said they had never attempted to come to Europe before, they just wanted a place where they were safe and could work. “They are not asking to go to any particular country, they just want to find safety to work, and to have freedom,” Jolie stressed.

The Goodwill Ambassador also visited an open centre near Malta’s main airport where vulnerable asylum-seekers are living in tents inside an old aircraft hangar while their asylum claims are assessed. The people she met there said living conditions were difficult.

More read and learn UNHCR .org

June 20 is World Refugee Day .

The PSA seeks to show the power of one. The actress-turned-philanthropist says, “One family forced to flee is too many. … One child growing up in a camp is too many. One refugee without hope is too many. … Do one thing. Visit UNHCR.org, and learn how you can make a difference.”

Angelina serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), and has been a huge voice for these displaced people.

pls,visit UNHCR DO 1 thing campaign.