Jolie said there’s nothing wrong with the current system for handling refugees-placing them in camps and selecting the “the exceptional cases of the most vulnerable people” for asylum.
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Angelina Jolie criticized Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday over his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
Her comments came after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, told the BBC simply turning away migrants “won’t work”.
Angelina Jolie said she is “very disheartened” by the US response to the global migration crisis.
Having travelled the world meeting people who have fled their countries because of war and persecution, Jolie-Pitt opened her speech by telling the assembled audience that today 60 million people are displaced, which is one in every 122 people.
The A-lister also compared the refugee crises to World War II, saying it’s “that once-in-a-generation moment when nations have to pull together”.
She said: ‘It has given space to a false air of legitimacy to those who promote the politics of fear and separation.
Jolie’s visit comes as Europe goes to extraordinary measures to deal with a massive influx of refugees, the biggest it has seen since World War II, with more than one million people crossing into the continent to seek asylum a year ago. She said it has led to “countries competing to be the toughest, in the hope of protecting themselves whatever the cost. and despite their global responsibilities”.
“Strength lies in being unafraid.”
Isolationism was not the answer, she said (according to the BBC account), adding: “If your neighbor’s house is on fire you are not safe if you lock your doors”.
But “today, we are seeing it break down”, she said, because of the number of conflicts and how many refugees are fleeing.
Jolie Pitt called on the global community to be more generous towards refugees, who were each “a person with an equal right to stand in dignity on this planet”. “America is built on freedom of religion so it’s hard to hear that this is coming from someone who is pressing to be president”.
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There are now 60 million displaced people in the world, and of the 20 million refugees that made it out of their country past year, only 1 percent were resettled, United Nations figures show.
