Angelina Jolie Visits Refugee Camp In Chad
These pictures come from her recent trip to a camp housing Dafur refugees in Chad. It’s worth reading the transcript of Angelina’s interview with Newsweek but here are just some exerpts from it:
What was your original motivation for working with the UNHCR, for doing these kinds of trips?
Angelina Jolie: I started traveling about seven years ago with film. I would go to places like Cambodia and hear about the many refugees in Thailand and hear about the land mines and hear about the history….I remember sitting up for two days straight and reading everything obsessively. I read about the UNHCR and I realized it was an agency that I didn’t know anything about: that they were taking care of 20 million people. … And I remember realizing that I couldn’t understand how I had not known that my whole life.
People will look at these pictures of you in Chad and ask, “What can I do?” What should they do?
There are great NGOs like SOS [Austria’s SOS Kinderdorp] and there are great NGOs inside and under the U.N. that you could send aid to. It’s important for the American people to know that a lot of people believe—I certainly believe—that it has been their outcry and their interest that has motivated our government. I think that the American people have paid attention to Darfur—a really amazing groundswell of people that really care, and are moved and emotional about the things they’ve seen when it is brought to their attention.
You’re living in New Orleans right now. Is that just because you like the city or because you wanted to bring attention to New Orleans, too?
A bit of both. Brad was doing a film here and so we were going spend a month here. [We] realized it was a place we liked, we liked the people, I liked the school for the kids. They’re very diverse. I liked the other parents. I feel very comfortable with them. We’re happy having our children here. Brad is working on rebuilding here…. But for me, just as a mom, I love the other parents and the kids and the schools. I’m starting to work on the education here and the school system here. There’s a lot of work to be done.
I think it’s fair to say people start out by looking at you, Angelina.
As long as they end up looking at them, that’s the point.
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