Mother and daughter Angelina Jolie, 40, and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, 9, had a special bonding time during their trip to Lebanon and Turkey over the weekend. The Hollywood superstar, who is also a United Nations ambassadress, brought her biological daughter to a refugee camp on Saturday to commemorate World Refugee Day and to meet Hala, a 12-year-old Syrian native living there.
"Shiloh is very aware that I hold refugee families in high regard and has been asking to come on missions and meet them for many years," the actress and mother of six said via People. "She had heard about Hala since my last visit to Lebanon, and has been wanting to meet her and her brothers and sisters," Jolie added.
She shared that while at the camp, Shiloh was able to play with the other children and made good friends. "I've often heard them say that the most painful thing is not that they have lost their homes - it is that they have lost their friends." She also mentioned that Shiloh had so many questions after they left the camp to meet with officials in Turkey. "She said she felt sad, but was happy that she went and is looking forward to the next visit," the actress further told People.
At Turkey, Angelina conducted official business and came face to face with other refugees, while also consulting with organizations and leaders, including Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan. This is her third visit to the country and will most likely not be her last. According to Daily Mail, Turkery is already host to over 1.6 million refugees coming from other war-torn places. The country has become the world's largest site for people seeking asylum, and more could be expected as the war escalates
In her speech to mark the event, Angelina highlighted that there is a crisis borne from these camps. "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," as reported on US Magazine.
With so many families displaced by the war, the actress is calling on other leaders of the world to do something about this growing problem, "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," she pointed out.
