Since 2001, Angelina Jolie has carried out more than 40 humanitarian missions in her role as UN High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador, and this past weekend she continued her efforts with her 9-year-old daughter Shiloh Jolie-Pitt by her side.
On Saturday, the 40-year-old actress and her daughter traveled to Turkey in honor of World Refugee Day, where they spent time touring a Syrian and Iraqi refugee camp in the southeastern province of Mardin.
In addition to their tour, the actress also met with UN officials, as well as Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom she thanked for his generosity towards the Syrian and Iraqis refugees. Jolie also voiced her concerns in an impassioned speech:
"We are here for a simple reason: This region is at the epicenter of a global crisis. Nearly 60 million people are displaced from their homes. That is one in every 122 people on our planet. Our world has never been richer or healthier or more advanced. Yet never before have so many people been dispossessed and stripped of their basic human rights," she said. "We should call this what it is: not just a 'refugee crisis,' but a crisis of global security and governance, that is manifesting itself in the worst refugee crisis ever recorded – and a time of mass displacement."
She added, "I plead to the international community and leaders of the world to recognize what this moment in mass human displacement means. This is not just another day. This World Refuge Day marks some frightening truths about our inability to manage international crisis – about our inability to broker peace and find lasting solutions."
To read Jolie's entire speech, head over to The UN Refugee Agency website.
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