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.
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.
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 2 (UNHCR) – UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie on Wednesday called for greater focus to be put on the reintegration of former Afghan refugees as she wrapped up her second visit to the western Asian nation.
During her two-day trip, the acclaimed actress met internally displaced people and refugee returnees still struggling to survive and reintegrate almost 10 years after returning to Afghanistan from years of exile.
More than 5.5 million refugees have returned since 2002, mainly from Pakistan and Iran, and now make up 20 per cent of the population. UNHCR is concerned that too many of these former refugees continue to live without jobs, shelter and other basic needs.
“It’s clear travelling through the country that what needs to be done is a very focused approach in places of return. We need to revisit the idea of what return is and the difference between just returning and reintegrating,” said Jolie, who last visited Afghanistan for UNHCR in 2008.
“The focus needs to be put now on reintegration, and that means not just putting up shelter but making sure there is water, job opportunities, a school for the children and medical clinics,” she added.
On Wednesday, Jolie returned to visit families living in a dilapidated warehouse in Kabul that once served as a storage facility for the national bus company. The Tamir Mili Bus depot is now one of 30 UNHCR-identified sites in the Afghan capital where returned refugees and internally displaced people can live while they eke out a living.
The Goodwill Ambassador caught up again with Khanum Gul in the small damp room she shares with her husband and eight children. A UNHCR plastic tarpaulin covered a gaping hole in the front wall, providing some shelter from the wind and snow. On Jolie’s first visit in 2008, Khanum had just given birth to her son Samir.
“It was very distressing to see that, because of the poor conditions, Samir seems to be suffering some form of developmental delay due to malnutrition or lack of medical care. He can’t walk and is barely surviving in what can only be described as a very cold and damp warehouse,” Jolie said.
Khanum’s husband, Eshan, tries to earn a living as a daily labourer. He waits for hours every day but is rarely picked for work. The couple also support Khanum’s ailing 70-year-old mother, Bi Bi Zamo Jan, who also met Jolie on her first visit.
“This old woman was so upset, because she feels like a burden. She watches her grandchildren go onto the streets every day to wash cars for a dollar a day so the family can eat. Often they earn nothing,” Jolie said. “Everyone I have met on this visit has been very clear. The Afghan people don’t want to become beggars. They want the opportunity to work for a living with dignity so they can provide for their families.”
The day after arriving on Monday evening, the Goodwill Ambassador travelled to the village of Qala Gadu, which lies north of Kabul on the Shomali Plain, the scene of fierce fighting during successive waves of conflict in Afghanistan since the late 1970s. Among the 2,500 families in the area, almost everyone is a returned refugee or was internally displaced before 2002.
Jolie met a group of young girls who will study at a new primary school that is being built in the village with funding from the actress. She also paid for a school in the remote returnee settlement of Tangi in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. The girls in Qala Gadu currently study next to the local mosque. The lack of a proper classroom means most girls can’t study beyond 4th Grade.
Ten-year-old Sahira presented Jolie with flowers on behalf of her classmates, saying: “If you build this school, I promise I will work really hard and study until the 12th Grade.” Sahira, who wants to be a doctor when she grows up, is the youngest of five daughters and the first of them to attend school.
UNHCR is currently rallying support from donors and humanitarian and development agencies to redouble efforts to help returning refugees integrate in Afghanistan.
By Ariane Rummery in Kabul, Afghanistan
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Angelina Jolie, UN refugee agency Goodwill Ambassador, issues appeal for civilians and refugees in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya
KABUL, Afghanistan – UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie today voiced deep concern for the tens of thousands of civilians caught up in two separate and fast-unfolding emergencies: Côte d’Ivoire and Libya.
“As we witness these newest crises unfold in west and north Africa, it is critical that all parties respect the fundamental right of people in danger to flee to safety – whether civilians caught in conflict in their own country or refugees and asylum seekers caught in new conflicts,” Jolie said. “All I’m asking is that civilians be protected, and not targeted or harmed.”
In Côte d’Ivoire, fierce fighting in the Abobo district of Abidjan and clashes in the west over the past few days have blocked access for humanitarian organizations and brought the country perilously close to all-out civil war. Thousands of people have been displaced in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial hub, and refugees have been streaming across the country’s western border into Liberia in unprecedented numbers. Eastern Liberia is already dealing with more than 70,000 Ivorians who have arrived there since the presidential election of late November.
At the same time, UNHCR is worried for thousands of refugees, asylum-seekers, and irregular migrants still inside Libya and in circumstances of considerable danger. Few of these have been able to make it out of Libya and into either Tunisia or Egypt – where most people leaving the country have been heading. On Tuesday, UNHCR said it was particularly concerned for sub-Saharan Africans who have become vulnerable because of suspicions that they are foreign mercenaries. Amid chaotic scenes at the Tunisian border, UNHCR also issued a joint appeal with the International Organization for Migration for a massive humanitarian evacuation for people fleeing Libya into Tunisia.
“With these new waves of uprising and conflict, there is and will continue to be massive new displacement. The world needs to address this moment. We have to give people safe passage, evacuation if needed, and ensure they have asylum. We don’t want to look back and find their deaths are on our hands,” Jolie said.
The acclaimed actress was speaking from Kabul, Afghanistan, where she has been on a low-profile two-day visit to listen to the problems of returned refugees still struggling to survive and reintegrate almost 10 years after returning from exile.
”As the world’s attention shifts to the newest refugee crises, we need to remember that if we don’t support people in the long term to really get back on their feet – to feed, shelter and educate their families, to earn a living with dignity, and to participate in meaningful ways in their societies – we will see a continued cycle of instability and new crises,” Jolie said.
UNHCR is rallying support from donors and other humanitarian and development agencies to redouble their efforts to help returning refugees reintegrate in Afghanistan.
Angelina Jolie was looking painfully thin as she met with the Prime Minister of Pakistan yesterday.
Jolie is in Pakistan in her role of United Nations goodwill ambassador to raise awareness of the plight of the victims of the recent floods that have devastated the country.
More than 1,500 Pakistanis have been killed and around 20million affected by flooding brought on by the annual monsoon rains last month.
Crops have been devastated and disease is spreading among survivors.
‘I am very moved by them and I hope that I am able to do something to help bring attention to the situation for all of the people in need in Pakistan,’ Jolie said.
‘This is not just a humanitarian crisis, it is an economic and social catastrophe.
Earlier in the day the actress covered her head up in a black scarf, and did her best to blend in with a group of women she was meeting who had lost their children in the disaster.
Jolie was visiting the Kandaro II Camp in Nowshera, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
‘I was shocked especially by how high the flood waters went,’ Jolie told reporters. ‘In some of the people’s houses, it was nine feet high.’
The U.N. hopes Jolie’s visit will bring attention and subsequent funds to the country.
Only $294 million of the $460 million in emergency funds requested by the UN has been received so far, despite what Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, calls: ‘One of the worst humanitarian disasters in UN history, in terms of number of people that we have to assist and also the area covered.’
‘There’s lots of speculation about why this one has not gotten the attention it deserves,’ Jolie said. ‘Even all of the wonderful coverage … is not getting the response that usually it’s able to get.’
Angelina also had some sharp words for a Florida church planning to burn copies of the Quran to mark the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City.
‘I have hardly the words that somebody would do that to somebody’s religious book,’ Jolie told reporters in Islamabad after her visit to the refugee camp, according to the Associated Press.
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CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta speaks to Angelina Jolie in Pakistan as she makes a desperate plea for flood victims.
A video message from UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina Jolie, on World Refugee Day 2010
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Angelina Jolie visits a daycare center run by the Women’s Federation of Sucumbíos, a province in northern Ecuador.
“It’s been eight years since I was last here and UNHCR’s presence has grown considerably,” the 35-year-old UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador shared. “They are going into the thickest parts of the jungle to reach the refugees, who are living in very remote locations and in desperate conditions.”
“I wanted to come back and meet with vulnerable people and focus on violence against women and unaccompanied minors,” Angie added. “I am so happy to be able to reconnect with some familiar faces, refugees I had met with during my 2002 trip.”
