Angelina Jolie made a recent trip to Iraq to meet with officials and address the current state of displaced people in the country. 

 Today, the actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador wrote an article for the Washington Post in which she says:

We still don't know exactly how many Iraqis have fled their homes, where they've all gone, or how they're managing to survive. Here is what we do know: More than 2 million people are refugees inside their own country -- without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water. Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man's land. Many of the survivors huddle in mosques, in abandoned buildings with no electricity, in tents or in one-room huts made of straw and mud. Fifty-eight percent of these internally displaced people are younger than 12 years old.

An additional 2.5 million Iraqis have sought refuge outside Iraq, mainly in Syria and Jordan. But those host countries have reached their limits. Overwhelmed by the refugees they already have, these countries have essentially closed their borders until the international community provides support.  (source)

In case you didn't catch it on the homepage, here is some video of Angie grubbing the mess-hall with some soldiers.  Something tells me she picked around the chipped beef and macaroni.

I'm not gonna lie . . . lady is the real deal.  Sometimes she drives me nuts, which probably comes down to envy rather than fair judgement, but Angie's commitment to lending a voice to displaced people really does impress me.  Seeing her name in the by-line on a Washington Post article entices readers to engage in her articles rather than passing them over.  Even if they only want to see what kind of a writer the Oscar winner is, at least they stand a chance of absorbing some of the facts about Iraqi refugees and IDPs.  Click here for the full article.

Related Cause:     Human Rights