Angelina Jolie Visits Refugees in Lebanon on Fifth Anniversary of Syrian Conflict
Hollywood star and Special Envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie arrived in Lebanon on Monday night to mark the fifth anniversary of the eruption of the Syrian conflict.
She paid a visit on Tuesday to several Syrian refugee camps in the country, including those in the eastern Bekaa region of Saadnayel, where she gave a press conference under the pouring rain.
Jolie stressed that the international community must address the root causes of the global refugee crisis.
"We cannot manage the world through aid relief in the place of diplomacy and political solutions," she sai at a press conference in the Bekaa.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge in the Bekaa.
Jolie said she had hoped to be in Syria helping victims return to their homes on the fifth anniversary of the uprising against President Bashar Assad. She said it's "tragic and shameful that we seem to be so far from that point."
"We should never forget that for all the focus on the refugee situation in Europe at this time, the greatest pressure is still being felt in the Middle East and North Africa, as it has for each of the last five years," Jolie added.
After a tidal wave of refugees poured into Europe last year, some countries began erecting political and physical barriers to migration, which have left tens of thousands of refugees stuck in squalid conditions in the Balkans this spring.
Jolie called on such countries to adhere to their international obligations to aid refugees.
"The reason we have laws and binding international agreements is precisely because of the temptation to deviate from them in times of pressure," she said.
Jolie met Khuloud, a 38-year-old mother of four now living in a tent in the Bekaa Valley, who was left paralyzed three years ago by a sniper in Syria, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
"Never once during our discussion did she ask for anything, did she stop smiling, or talk of anything other than her desire for her children to have the chance to go to school and have a better life," the actress and activist said.
"When I saw her beautiful smile, and her dedicated husband and children looking after her, I was in awe of them. They are heroes to me. And I ask myself, what have we come to when such survivors are made to feel like beggars?"
Jolie later visited Beirut "where she met a group of women living in poor conditions, a damp collective shelter, that left them and their families exposed to sickness," said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Jolie had made a number of low-profile trips to Lebanon in her role as UNHCR envoy.
Lebanon has struggled to deal with an influx of refugees that now represents a quarter of its four-million-strong population, and last year began making it harder for Syrian refugees to stay.
Almost 4.3 million Syrians have fled civil war since 2011 and most remain in the region, mainly in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
Some 1.2 million are registered in Lebanon and about 630,000 in Jordan, most living outside formal refugee camps.
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Source: Naharnet, Associated Press, Agence France Presse
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