UNHCR stands for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Angelina contacted the UNHCR to find out what she could do to help better understand the issues of the world (approx. 2001). Not long after her meeting with the UNHCR, she was on her way to Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Sierra Leone, where she spent several weeks meeting refugees and working with UNHCR field staff.

In the summer of 2001 she traveled with the UNHCR to Cambodia and spent a week with Afghan refugees in Pakistan. On August 27th Angelina was named UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, accepting the responsibility of meeting with and advocating for the protection of refugees on five continents.

Since then she has traveled to remote and desolate regions, meeting refugees and field workers in some 20 countries and regions including Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Ecuador, Kenya, Namibia, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, the Russian Federation, Jordan, Egypt, Chad, Sudan’s Darfur region, Lebanon, India and Costa Rica.

Her passion for refugees and their rights are shown in her journals that she writes on her field missions. She published a book of her first four journals in 2003 entitled “Notes from My Travels, Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador". You can read her most recent journals at her official UNHCR web page.

To read more about Angelina's work with the UNHCR please visit their official page here.

I'd like there to be less refugees. I'd like all girls to go to school. That's what we need to be thinking about, and working on making our own families good and strong and our own kids happy. Not to cloud our minds with things that don’t matter.
-ANGELINA JOLIE

Land Mines Blow

Cambodia Vision

Amnesty International

Heifer