Angelina Jolie: 'We cannot pick and choose which human rights violations we will and won’t tolerate', World Refugee Day, UNHCR - 2015

20 June 2015, Midyat Refugee Camp, Mardin, Turkey

We are here for a simple reason: This region is at the epicentre of a global crisis. Nearly 60 million people are displaced from their homes. That is one in every 122 people on our planet. Our world has never been richer or healthier or more advanced. Yet never before have so many people been dispossessed and stripped of their basic human rights. We should call this what it is: not just a “refugee crisis,” but a crisis of global security and governance, that is manifesting itself in the worst refugee crisis ever recorded – and a time of mass displacement.

The greatest single source of these massive refugee flows is Syria. In the space of four years, Turkey has become the country with the largest number of refugees anywhere in the world, with 1.8 million displaced Syrian and Iraqis. Lebanon, where I was yesterday, is hosting an even greater density of displaced people: every fourth person in Lebanon is now a Syrian refugee. People are running out of places to run to. If you are an Iraqi or a Syrian fleeing violence, where do you go? Every border country is being pushed beyond its limits.

That is why we see so many dying at sea. It is not a “new trend,” it is a result of those fleeing country after country and finding no safe place. These are not economic migrants looking for a better life, these are desperate refugees who are fleeing war and persecution. The average stay in a refugee camp is 17 years. Think of your own life. Think of what that would mean. For many, it is their entire childhood. During displacement you might be able to get an education, or continue your education. But very likely, you will not.

As a refugee, you cannot legally work in a host country. So your skills and education will dull over those long years and your much-needed contribution will be lost. As a refugee you learn how the world feels about you. You know if your suffering causes outrage and compassion – or if it is mostly ignored. Familes like the six young people I met yesterday, living in Lebanon without parents, on half food rations and paying US$100 a month to live in a tent because UNHCR does not have the funds or capability to take full care of everyone - they know.

We should see this time in displacement as the time where we should take the most care, and give the most support. Not because they are vulnerable, but because in fact they are the future stability of all the countries we say we are so concerned about. So my first message is that it is due time for people to respect the plight of refugees and see their value. We must protect them, and invest in them. They are not a problem, they are part of the solution to this global crisis. They are the potential for the rebuilding and restabilization of countries.

But second, even more than this, I plead to the international community and leaders of the world to recognize what this moment in mass human displacement means. This is not just another day. This World Refuge Day marks some frightening truths about our inability to manage international crisis - about our inability to broker peace and find lasting solutions. Today – as happened every day on average last year – over 40,000 people will be forced from their homes. And it will be the same tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that, if this political inertia continues.

It is hard to point to a single instance where as an international community we are decisively addressing the root causes of refugee flows. Displacement is multiplying because the wars don’t end, and countries emerging from conflict don’t get the support they need. We handle crises by discussing either boots on the ground or aid relief. The global crisis is showing us that this narrow view of dealing with conflict is wrong and ineffective. UNHCR, along with other UN and NGO agencies, cannot be expected to manage the chaos of a population the size of France displaced.

I have spent the last 14 years among the UNHCR staff. I know their dedication. Even love for refugees. I have also seen them overwhelmed and emotional over the last few years. They and other UN agencies and NGOs are filling a gap left by the international community. We are past the breaking point. The answer to a world crisis like this is not how many financial appeals can be met. Or in truth, by what percentage they can be met. I am of course grateful for the funds countries have contributed even if they are not enough to meet all the needs. But I say to those countries, your job is not to fund displacement but to prevent it. To end it.

Displacement at 60 million is a sign of our inability to work together as a community, to apply all our laws and uses our collective institutions effectively. To live by our standards and keep our word. There is an explosion of human suffering and displacement on a level that has never been seen before, and it cannot be managed by aid relief, it must be managed by diplomacy and law. This is a central problem. We cannot pick and choose which human rights violations we will and won’t tolerate.

We have the tools we need - the resolutions, the doctrines, the conventions, the courts. But if these tools are misused, inconsistently applied or applied in a self-serving way, we will continue on this trend of displacement and it will grow and grow. It is inhumane to expect all of these families to tolerate this kind of life. We all know what needs to be done, we must do better. And it is self-evident that we have to start with Syria.

I call, again, on the United Nations Security Council: Send your ministers and ambassadors here. Witness this crisis for yourself. See that it simply cannot go on. And that it is past time for a credible plan to reach a political solution to end the conflict. I thank the people of Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan for their generosity, and all host countries. To all the families here, and around our world, marking this Holy Month, I say, “Ramadan Kareem.” And I pay tribute to refugees themselves - the people we rightly celebrate today, not only here in Turkey but around the world. Thank you.”

Related: See Angelina Jolie's famous speech on World Refugee Day 2009, also on Speakola.

Angelina Jolie: 'I am here today to say that refugees are not numbers', World Refugee Day - 2009

18 June 2009, Washington DC, USA

We're here today to talk about millions of desperate families – families so cut-off from civilization that they don't even know that a day like this exists on their behalf. Millions. And numbers can illuminate but they can also obscure. So I am here today to say that refugees are not numbers. They’re not even just refugees. They are mothers and daughters and fathers and sons – they are farmers, teachers, doctors, engineers, they are individuals all. And most of all they are survivors – each one with a remarkable story that tells of resilience in the face of great loss. They are the most impressive people I have ever met and they are also some of the world's most vulnerable. Stripped of home and country, refugees are buffeted from every ill wind that blows across this planet.

I remember meeting a pregnant Afghani woman in a completely abandoned camp in Pakistan. She couldn't travel when everyone else was relocated because she was too late in her pregnancy. She was alone with her two children and another woman. There was nothing for miles around the camp – not a single tree, no other people in sight. So when they asked me to come in for tea I said I didn't feel it necessary. But being Afghans, they take pride in how they treat their guests so they insisted and they guided me into a small dirt house with no roof to keep out the scorching heat, and they dusted off the two old mats that they ate, slept and prayed on. And we sat and we talked and they were just the loveliest women. And then with a few twigs and a single tin cup of water, they made the last of their tea and insisted on me to enjoy it.

Since before the parable of the Widow’s Mite it has been known that those who have the least will give the most. Most refugee families will offer you the only food they have and pretend they're not hungry. And the generosity of the poor applies not only to refugees. We should never forget that more than 80% of refugees are hosted and have been for years and years in the poorest developing countries.

Pakistan, a country now facing a crisis with over two million of its own people despised is still hosting 1.7 million Afghans and has hosted millions of Afghan families for nearly thirty years. I remember before we said good-bye to the pregnant lady she pointed to a young boy. He had a dusty face, the brightest green eyes I have ever seen but such a sad look but she explained that he's always asking for more food. And it hurts her to say that they have nothing. And she asked if we would consider taking him, would we take her sons so he could eat. And she said it with tears in her eyes with such a desperation. A desperation unimaginable to every parent in this room. A few weeks later, a war in Afghanistan began and heavy fighting started right where they were. I've been back to that region three times and I look for them every time.

The threat of climate change, the competition for resources, and ever growing global inequality has created deepening intractable conflicts. Whether it be Darfur, Myanmar, or Swat Valley or some as yet unknown crisis. Mass migrations will be a feature of our future, and we must adjust to this living reality. And again I would urge you to look beyond the simple number and look instead at the individual.

I remember in Tanzania, I met a child in a tent. He sat on the dusty floor; he's been shot on the back and left paralyzed. And he crawled forward to shake my hand, he was no more than fifteen. He had bog pretty eyes, big wide sparkling smile, and after he'd been to, he's full of laughter and love. Later that night I asked whether he'd not been taken to a hospital or at least given a wheelchair and I was told that the boy's entire family had been killed so there was no one to look after him. And he'd not been accepted for asylum in a third. And the aid worker said they’d spent the money they could but they didn't have any more. And I thought about him all night and I wondered what I should do. And then I remembered the next thing I walked through the camp and I saw more victims of war. I saw small children full of hunger and fear, crying mothers, wounded fathers, I saw a sea of humanity - all desperate, all deserving.

There are hundreds of thousands in that camp and there are millions around the world. And at that time I felt hopeless and overwhelmed by the realization of the magnitude of the problem. But the later on that trip, I met an eight year old girl who had seen her family killed in front of her and she grabbed her baby brother and she ran into the jungle and survived, terrified an alone for two weeks. She managed to find bananas and feed herself and her brother. And when I met her she didn’t talk, she just walked back and forth and I kept trying to tell her how brave we thought she was. She just stared at the window. And a year later I came back to that same camp and i saw her again. She was still very shy but she was beginning to speak and she was sweet and polite but she still didn't care about [] me or visitors she just wanted to know how her brother was. He was with the doctors and she was just checking to make sure everything's gonna be okay. She was his mother now. That little girl had a depth and a strength that I will never know. And on that trip, and many that followed I came to know refugees as not only as the most vulnerable people on earth but as the most resilient.

As an American I know the strength that diversity has given my country. A country built by what now some would dismiss as asylum seekers or economic migrants. And I believe we must persuade the world that refugees must now be simply viewed as a burden. They are survivors. And they can bring those qualities to the service of their communities and the countries that shelter them.

If you see the individual, you see the education and knowledge the refugees pass on to their children because often it is all they have to pass on. It is why it's so important that we give them education. If you see the individual, you see the contribution that can be made by refugees to their host countries and how important they will be to their own land when eventually they return.

In the last nine years I have made many visits to the field with UNFCR. I do it to raise awareness for the plight of refugees but I also do it for me. The refugees I have met and spent time with have profoundly changed my life. The eight-year-old girl who saved her brother taught me what it is to be brave. The pregnant woman in Pakistan taught me what it is to be a mother. And the paralyzed boy who had been shot in the back with his big smile showed me the strength of an unbreakable spirit. So today, on world refugee day, I thank them for letting me into their lives. And I thank you for coming.

Related content: Angelina Jolie's speech in Turkey for World Refugee Day 2015, is also on Speakola.

"We are here for a simple reason: This region is at the epicentre of a global crisis. Nearly 60 million people are displaced from their homes. That is one in every 122 people on our planet."

Full transcript and video