Angelina Jolie leaves role as UN refugee agency envoy

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Angelina Jolie and the United Nations’ refugee company are parting methods after greater than twenty years.

In a joint assertion issued Friday, the U.S. actor and the company introduced she was “transferring on” from her function because the company’s particular envoy “to have interaction on a broader set of humanitarian and human rights points.”

“I’ll proceed to do every little thing in my energy within the years to return to help refugees and different displaced individuals,” Jolie was quoted as saying within the assertion, including that she felt it was time “to work otherwise” by immediately partaking with refugees and native organizations.

Jolie first began working with the U.N. refugee company in 2001 and was appointed its particular envoy in 2012. The discharge described the multi-hyphenate as “finishing up greater than 60 subject missions to bear witness to tales of struggling in addition to hope and resilience.”

“After a protracted and profitable time with UNHCR, I admire her want to shift her engagement and help her resolution,” U.N. Excessive Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi was quoted as saying. “I do know the refugee trigger will stay near her coronary heart, and I’m sure she is going to deliver the identical ardour and a spotlight to a wider humanitarian portfolio.”

In an opinion piece revealed in The Guardian final month, Jolie alluded to frustration with the dearth of worldwide progress in ending sexual violence in battle.

“We meet and focus on these horrors and agree that they need to by no means be allowed to occur once more. We promise to attract — and to carry — that line. However in the case of exhausting decisions about the way to implement these guarantees, we run into the identical issues repeatedly,” she wrote, particularly calling out U.N. Safety Council members for “abusing their veto energy.”

Jolie beforehand characterised the United Nations as “imperfect” throughout a 2017 speech in Geneva, but additionally defended the worldwide physique and stated it wanted to be supported.

She later pressed the United Nations to create a everlasting and impartial investigative physique to amass and consider proof in circumstances relating to alleged battle crimes, crimes in opposition to humanity and different human rights violations. Whereas selling that effort at U.N. headquarters in 2019, she instructed the AP that selling equality for ladies, combatting injustice, and serving to refugees have been crucial elements of her life after her youngsters.

“However in some ways, they go hand in hand,” she stated. Jolie has been concerned in different advocacy efforts, not too long ago pushing for the renewal of the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act within the U.S.

Jolie started visiting refugee camps in 2001, and was appointed as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador that very same 12 months. On the time, the then-high commissioner stated he hoped the then-26-year-old actress may direct younger individuals’s consideration to the plight of refugees.

Final 12 months, Jolie instructed The Related Press in Burkina Faso that she was involved that rising displacement the world over would drive extra instability — and that governments needed to do one thing to deal with the conflicts on the root of the difficulty.

“In comparison with after I started working with UNHCR 20 years in the past, it looks like governments have largely given up on diplomacy … international locations which have the least are doing probably the most to help the refugees,” she instructed the AP.

Creating international locations play host to greater than 80% of the world’s refugees, in response to UNHCR, which additionally introduced in Could that the variety of displaced individuals crossed 100 million for the primary time. Talking to the AP in August, Grandi praised the European Union’s efforts to assist Ukrainian refugees however implored world leaders to recollect the opposite humanitarian crises for which is company was fundraising.

“The large drawback that we have now for the time being is that it tends to marginalize all different crises through which individuals endure,” Grandi stated of Russia’s battle in Ukraine.

UNHCR lists totally different classes of “outstanding supporters” on its web site, together with goodwill ambassadors like Australian actor Cate Blanchett, British writer Neil Gaiman and Pakistani actor Mahira Khan.

In response to a request for added remark, the U.N. company declined to supply additional particulars, together with whether or not they would appoint one other particular envoy to switch Jolie.