24 June, 2017
Meeting with one courageous survivor, Angelina explained the girl was the "same age as my eldest son, who is already a mother to a child born of rape".
United Nations refugee agency special envoy Angelina Jolie marked World Refugee Day in Kenya on Tuesday by calling for better treatment of refugees in conflict zones. According to a post on the UNHCR website, all of the young girls in the Heshima Kenya Safe House were separated from their families and nearly all of them have fled their countries due to "extreme violence".
She was since promoted to special envoy after years of vast activism, E!
'How we treat them is a measure of our humanity as nations, ' she added, according to UNHCR.
UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie marked World Refugee Day 2017 visiting adolescent refugee girls in Nairobi. She visited a training center on how to prevent sexual violence in conflict and met with refugees from conflicts in Burundi, South Sudan, Somalia and Congo. They had to escape extreme violence or persecution, lost everything and witnessed the death of family members.
"[Refugees] are doing their best to carry on with minimal support, trying to live lives of dignity against impossible odds", she continued.
The UNHCR says Kenya hosts some 491,000 refugees, of which 101,713 are from South Sudan, which the United Nations has said is the world's fastest growing refugee crisis.
The Special Envoy said: "Kenya hosts close to half a million refugees and we at UNHCR are very grateful to the people and government of Kenya for that".
The Hollywood star visited at least 20 of girls in a safe house in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. They are provided with education, and training in a variety of skills to enable them to become self-reliant.
"It is true that these are a minority of cases but when abuses are carried out by peacekeepers, as you know, it destroys the very goal of peacekeeping, which is to protect civilian life", said Jolie, however, also highlighting the fact that peacekeepers as well are at the forefront of the fight against sexual abuse.
