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Actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie Voight was born on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles, California, to actor Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand. She rose to stardom in the 1990s.
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Jolie first personally encountered the effects of a humanitarian crisis while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in war-torn Cambodia, an experience she later credited with having brought her a greater understanding of the world. Upon her return home, she contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots
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she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where she donated $1 million in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal, the largest donation UNHCR had ever received from a private individual.She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits
She was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva . -
• August 2002, Humanitarian Award from the Church World Service's Immigration and Refugee Program
• October 2003, she was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association
• November 2007Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee
• November 2013, Jolie received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
• June 2014, she was appointed an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George -
In an effort to connect her Cambodian-born son with his heritage, Jolie purchased a house in his country of birth in 2003. The traditional home sat on 39 hectares in the northwestern province of Battambang, adjacent to a national park infiltrated with poachers who threatened the dwindling populations of Asian black bears, Asian elephants, and Indochinese tigers. She purchased the surrounding 60,000 hectares and turned the area into a wildlife reserve named for her son, the Maddox Jolie Project.
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Jolie has built at least ten schools in Cambodia, and funds the Maddox Chivan Children's Center, a care facility for children affected by HIV, in the capital Phnom Penh. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the birthplace of her daughter, she funds the Zahara Children's Center, which treats children suffering from HIV or tuberculosis. She has also built schools elsewhere in the world, including a school and a boarding facility for girls at Kakuma refugee camp in north-western Kenyaa .
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In her expanded role, she represents UNHCR and Guterres at the diplomatic level to facilitate lasting solutions for people displaced by major crises.In the months following the promotion, she made her first visit as Special Envoy to Ecuador, where she met with Colombian refugees, and she accompanied Guterres on a week-long tour of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, to assess the situation of refugees from neighboring Syria.
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In a campaign against sexual violence in military conflict zones, the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative.To highlight the problem, Jolie and Hague subsequently travelled to eastern DR Congo, where rape has been frequently used as a weapon of war by rebel groups and soldiers.
