Actress Angelina Jolie visited war refugees in Iraq to appeal to the international community for more funding for three million displaced civilians.
Jolie is the special envoy for the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, and has visited Iraq five times, according to New York Daily News. The war has displaced three million Iraqis and Syrians and they live in northern Iraq in desperate conditions. Jolie said if this humanitarian crisis is not resolved it will lead to catastrophe.
The UNHCR received 53 percent of the $337 million in 2014 that was required to fund its response to internal displacement in Iraq and Syria. Millions of people fled their homes after a civil war erupted in Syria four years ago. As the fighting intensified, it began to spill into Iraq. Millions of other people became displaced after ISIS rose to power and seized control of one third of both Iraq and Syria.
"We are being tested here as an international community and so far, for all immense efforts and good intentions, the international community is failing," Jolie said at a camp for the displaced in Dohuk, a northern Iraqi city, according to CBS News. "The people I met today need to know that we will be with them.
Giving them the support they need to survive for every day they remain displaced. And above all they need to know that one day they will be able to go home."
The UNHCR reported that more than 3.8 million Syrians have fled to Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Another 7.6 million Syrians remain displaced within Syria. Approximately 1.8 million Iraqis were also displaced in 2014 due to violence by the Sunni militants.
