| | | Date: Jun 18, 2018 | | Source: The Daily Star |  |  |  |
| | World is failing refugees: U.N. envoy Jolie | Reuters
DOMIZ CAMP, Iraq: The world is failing to properly invest in the Syrian refugee crisis and families, women and children are suffering terribly as a result, the U.N. refugee agency’s special envoy Angelina Jolie said Sunday.
The Hollywood actress was visiting Domiz camp – located in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region – which is home to 33,000 Syrian refugees displaced by seven years of civil war.
Funding received by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to help refugees from the Syrian conflict fell sharply this year from 2017 when the agency received only 50 percent of the funds it needed, Jolie told a news conference.
“There are terrible human consequences. When there is even not the bare minimum of aid, refuge families cannot receive adequate medical treatment. Women and girls are left vulnerable to sexual violence, many children cannot go to school, and we squander the opportunity to invest in refugees,” she said.
UNHCR will publish figures Tuesday that show that the number of displaced people globally, and the duration of their exiles, are “the highest they have ever been,” she said.
“At the same time political solutions seem to be completely lacking leaving a void that humanitarian aid cannot fill. Words like ‘unsustainable’ don’t really paint a picture of how desperate the situation really is,” Jolie added.
She met families at the camp, including two mothers who are now widows caring for young children after their husbands died from conditions that could have been treated under normal conditions, Jolie said.
In 2011, Domiz was a small camp housing tents. Now it is a town complete with concrete houses, shops and fast-food stalls.
Ahmad Hussein, a refugee father of nine children, one of whom died and five of whom are handicapped, said he and other refugees lacked access to basic treatment and could not find jobs.
Jolie visited Mosul Saturday, the biggest city in northern Iraq, which Iraqi forces took back last year from Daesh (ISIS) militants, who had occupied the city for three years, forcing 900,000 residents to flee.
In her fifth visit to Iraq, Jolie met families from western Mosul and walked through bombed-out streets, video footage and photos provided by the UNHCR showed.
Normality has returned to many parts of Mosul, with displaced residents leaving camps nearby to return home, but reconstruction in the Old City in West Mosul has been slow.
It was largely destroyed during a campaign by a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi government units, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Shiite militias backed by air support from a U.S.-led coalition.
“This is the worst devastation I have seen in all my years working with UNHCR. People here have lost everything,” Jolie said in a U.N. statement. “They are destitute. They have no medicine for their children, and many have no running water or basic services,” she said.
Jolie has worked for the UNHCR since 2001, visiting uprooted civilians from Iraq to Cambodia and Kenya. |
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