I don't see borders and I see lives and I see children and this is you know an environment where there is a war but there is a humanitarian crisis. And they have to be addressed simultaneously. We can't wait for one to end to then finally take the time to address the other, it has to start right now.

There are 33 million refugee worldwide. Of this total, 21 million are IDPs (internally displaced people) seeking safety from conflict within their own countries. The other 12 million are refugees who have fled to another country in search of safety. Of this total, almost 10 million are under the mandate of The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, up 14% since 2002. Why? It's mostly because of the war in Iraq:

UNHCR: refugee numbers up for the first time in five years According to the UNHCR report, the increase in the number of refugees is largely due to the situation in Iraq, which by the end of 2006 had forced up to 1.5 million Iraqis to seek refuge in other countries, particularly Syria and Jordan.

In 2006, the main group of refugees under UNHCR's mandate continued to be Afghans (2.1 million), followed by Iraqis (1.5 million), Sudanese (686,000), Somalis (460,000), and refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi (about 400,000 each).

UNHCR figures do not include some 4.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, who fall under the mandate of a separate agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). If added, the total number of refugees under both agencies' mandates is over 14 million.

You can read or download the whole report at the UNHCR's website : The State of the World's Refugees 2006.

In researching Ms. Jolie's role in bringing awareness to the plight of refugees, I discovered quite a number of issues that are interconnected to the plight of refugees :

1. War is the most obvious reason for the displacements of people around the world. Cataclisms like Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 Tsunami are other examples. Yet there is a growing trend of "eco refugees", people displaced by environmental degradation, most often due to lack of water and desertification.


2. Most refugees become "residents without a state", remaining in legal limbo for years. In most cases the host country will settle them in cordoned areas to be managed by relief agencies coordinated by the United Nations. Their legal fate hinges on whatever agreements the United Nations, the country the origin and the hosting government work out in order to address the refugee's situation. For years they can remain without proper immigration status and thus with no way to earn a living, settle down and regain anything resembling a normal life.


3. Refugee management is exactly that : It's meant to deal with the temporary relief of basic needs like food, medicine, housing, clothing and water. Yet due to the lack of proper sanitation and living infrastructures, several studies have found that up to 75% of the death rate in refugee camps can be attributed to malnutrition and unsanitary conditions.


4. Most troubling is the demographic composition. Women make the majority of refugees at 51%. As to age, 45% of refugees worldwide are children under the age of 18, with 11% under the age of 5 and 19% between 5 and 11 years.
   

From all the celebrities out there doing humanitarian, charity or political work, Angelina Jolie strikes me as one of the most articulate, best informed and most committed to her work as communicator of the suffering of those who she serves. And I give her extra kudos for taking on a cause that is actually a matrix of interconnect crisis. Environmental degradation, foreign policy, economic justice, health care, sanitation, war : All of these come together under the banner of "humanitarian refugee relief". You have to give her credit for not shying away, for the 8 years she's been a goodwill ambassador, from the complexity of her mission.

And on that note, here's another interesting fact I discovered : the UNCHR is trying to raise US$1.393 billion for their worldwide refugee programs. The United States spends $720 MILLION A DAY in the war in Iraq.

You do the math.