Angelina Jolie Worried about Syria Refugees as Conflict Roars
Hollywood movie star Angelina Jolie on Friday expressed concern about the threat of a winter freeze to Syrians who have fled the conflict in their country, a day after meeting refugees at camps in Turkey.
“With the violence in the conflict showing no signs of easing up and the numbers (of refugees) growing… it is a very large concern for all of us,” Jolie, a UN special envoy, told reporters in Ankara.
“I share everyone’s concern about the winter approaching,” she added, calling for help to make sure that “nobody freezes to death in this very very frightened time.”
Accompanied by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, Jolie held talks with President Abdullah Gul and Turkish officials in Ankara, a day after visiting two refugee camps along the border.
The Oscar-winning actress listened to the accounts of refugees who had fled Syria, where a brutal conflict that began as a peaceful uprising against the Damascus regime has now killed around 27,000 people, according to activists.
“No one wants to live as a refugee. No one wants to live in a camp,” Jolie said.
“All of these people lost their homes and they fled extreme violence, they lost their families. They are very, very emotional.”
Syrian refugees still felt “very alone and in many ways abandoned” despite the extensive coverage of their plight, she added.
“They are of course also very traumatised,” said Jolie, though she added that the Turkish government had said they were providing psychological support.
Jolie, who visited another camp in June last year, praised the Turkish camps as “very organised”.
But she added: “It is a large amount of people and it is still at the end of the day a camp.”
The UN says more than 1.2 million Syrians, more than half of them children, have been displaced inside the country while an estimated 250,000 refugees have sought shelter in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
The American film star, herself a mother of six including three adopted children, thanked all those host countries who had taken in refugees and had done what they could for the children.
Guterres took the opportunity to appeal to the international community “to fully support first of all humanitarian aid inside Syria … and the host countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.”
He urged the entire world to “keep your borders open to the Syrians that are fleeing such a dramatic conflict.”
But the Lebanese government has ruled out setting up refugee camps amid fears that the crisis in neighbouring Syria could spill across its borders.
Turkey, which is already home to some 80,000 registered refugees in its several camps in the southeast bordering Syria, has said it can handle no more than 100,000 refugees.
As the numbers keep growing and approach the 100,000 threshold, Ankara has called for safe zones to protect people on Syrian soil. But that proposal fell on deaf ears at a UN Security Council meeting last month.
Turkish diplomatic sources said Friday they had reiterated their appeal to the international community to establish a “safe environment” inside Syria to protect people there.
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