Published on Sep 12, 2012 by unhcr
UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie and
the refugee agency's chief, António Guterres, meet Syrian refugees in
Jordan and hear their harrowing tales.
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by BBCMundo
Como parte de sus funciones como enviada especial de Naciones Unidas, la actriz estadounidense visitó el campo de Zaatari en Jordania, en donde más de 30.000 desplazados huyen de la violencia en Siria.
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by MaximsNewsPEOPLE
Jordan Times
Jordan’s role commended as host of Syrian refugees
by JT | Sep 11, 2012 | 22:55 Updated: Sep 11, 2012 | 22:55
AMMAN —
His Majesty King Abdullah on Tuesday highlighted Jordan’s efforts to
provide humanitarian services to Syrians, reiterating the need to reach a
political solution to end the bloodshed in Syria.
During
separate meetings with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio
Guterres and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, the King
discussed the Syrian crisis and its repercussions, a Royal Court
statement said.
He
cited the growing burden the displaced community is placing on Jordan’s
resources, commending the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) support to the
Kingdom in providing aid to the refugees.
Guterres
said the international community must shoulder its responsibility
towards the Syrian refugees, particularly as the current level of
support is still “insufficient”.
He commended Jordan’s role in alleviating the suffering of the Syrian refugees.
Guterres
voiced the UNHCR’s intention to help the Kingdom bear the burden of
hosting the growing number of Syrians, stressing that Jordan is a
stabilising factor in the Middle East.
The
meeting was attended by UN Refugee Agency’s special envoy Angelina
Jolie, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and a number of senior officials
from the UNHCR.
During
his meeting with Burns, His Majesty also discussed bilateral ties and
efforts to bring about peace in the Middle East on the basis of the
two-state solution.
The
Monarch underlined Jordan’s support for a political solution to the
crisis that would protect its unity and put an end to the bloodshed,
according to the statement.
Senate President Taher Masri also met with Burns and highlighted Jordan’s efforts to achieve comprehensive reform.
Meanwhile,
Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh met with Guterres and Jolie at the Prime
Ministry and discussed the developments in Syria and their social and
economic impact on Jordan.
He
said the Kingdom expects more Syrian refugees to cross the border,
especially as the security situation is worsening in Syria, specifically
in its southern region, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.
Tarawneh
thanked the UN and other international agencies for supporting Jordan
to enable it to continue its humanitarian role towards the refugees.
The
premier noted that Jordan is establishing mobile schools inside the
Syrian refugee camps and needs more support to develop these schools to
accommodate Syrian students.
He added that the government also provides the Syrians with subsidised commodities on equal footing with citizens.
Guterres
indicated that around 200,000 Syrians have crossed the borders to
Jordan since the start of the unrest in Syria, stressing that this
number places huge economic and social burdens on the Kingdom and that
the world should understand the difficulties Jordan is facing.
For
her part, Jolie voiced her appreciation of the “positive” role the
Kingdom is playing to alleviate the suffering of the Syrians, Petra
reported.
Earlier
on Tuesday, Judeh met with Guterres and Jolie and outlined the services
provided by the Kingdom to Syrian refugees. He also accompanied them on
a tour of the Zaatari Refugee Camp.
At
a joint press conference with Guterres and Jolie, Judeh stressed that
Jordan has no intention to close its borders with Syria and will
continue receiving Syrian refugees fleeing the violence.
Under Royal directives, the Kingdom will maintain its open-border policy despite its scarce resources.
Jerusalem Post
Photo: reuters
ZAATARI,
Jordan - Syrian refugees stuck in a dust-blown camp in Jordan gave gruesome accounts of civilians incinerated in their country's civil war to UN special envoy and actress Angelina Jolie on Tuesday, moving her to tears.
The United Nations is in the process of registering more than 250,000 refugees from the 17-month-old conflict in four neighbouring countries, with more than 100,000 arriving in August alone - 85,000 of those in Jordan.
On average around 2,000 Syrians arrive each day in Jordan and the country has already declared the influx is beyond what it can deal with and appealed for international help.
"Little children who were asked what they saw described body parts separated and burnt people being pulled apart like chicken. A little 9-year-old girl said that," Jolie told reporters after a two-day visit to Jordan's Zaatari camp.
"It's been a very heavy experience because often at times you come to these camps ... and rarely do you come when meet them as they cross the border and get to know people the moment they become a refugee," she said, stopping to compose herself.
"They will say: 'As the months go on there will be no more of us, our homes are gone are families are gone' ."
Escaping an escalating military campaign by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, refugees languish in an unfinished camp where aid agencies and authorities are struggling to provide the most basic shelter and facilities.
At Zaatari, 28,000 people live in searing late summer heat with limited facilities and choking, dust-filled winds.
"The world is watching as though they mean to humiliate the Syrian people. We feel we are in a big detention center and zoo, fenced around where everyone comes to capitalize on our suffering," said Musa Awadat, a father of six. "We didn't flee from Syria to come here to another prison."
'International appeals for funding to help refugees not being met'
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres, who toured the camp with Jolie and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, said their visit was a message to the world "to help us and the Jordanian government in order to massively invest in improving the living conditions of the refugees in this camp".
Jolie traveled to Syria in 2007 and again in 2009 to meet Iraqi refugees with her partner, actor Brad Pitt. During one trip they met Assad and his wife Asma, who later told Vanity Fair magazine that the couples lunched in the capital.
Jolie, dressed in a black T-shirt with her hair tied back, said that all appeals for international funding to tackling the refugee crisis had "not been met."
Syrian opposition groups say more than 27,000 people have died in an uprising that has lasted more than 17 months and has descended into outright civil war in the pivotal Arab state.
"The complexity of this crisis is one of the aspects that sets it apart, and the speed at which people have fled Syria," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva on Tuesday.
"With 100,000 having fled to neighboring countries in the space of a single month, August, that makes it an extraordinary acceleration of this crisis," he told a news briefing.
He said that almost 200,000 Syrians had crossed into Jordan, although not all were registered as refugees.
In April, Jolie was promoted from serving as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador to a special envoy.
Zaatari, Jordan (CNN) -- Hoping her celebrity will
bring attention to the widening Syrian refugee crisis, actress and U.N.
envoy Angelina Jolie spoke of the horrors that children, many of them
orphans, have witnessed in Syria.
Videos
AP Video
TODAY @todayshow
Telegraph video
BBC video
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by Goodman84Sweden
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by BBCArabicNews
قالت نجمة هوليود أنجلا جولي ومبعوثة الأمم المتحدة الى مجيمات اللاجئين السوريين في الأردن إنها تتألم للوضع الإنساني الذي يمر به الفارون من القتال الدائر في سوريا حالياودعت الى التكاتف من أجل وضع حد للأزمة الإنسانية المتفاقمة.
CNN
Jerusalem Post
Syrian refugees move Angelina Jolie to tears
09/12/2012 08:12
Photo: reuters
ZAATARI,Jordan - Syrian refugees stuck in a dust-blown camp in Jordan gave gruesome accounts of civilians incinerated in their country's civil war to UN special envoy and actress Angelina Jolie on Tuesday, moving her to tears.
The United Nations is in the process of registering more than 250,000 refugees from the 17-month-old conflict in four neighbouring countries, with more than 100,000 arriving in August alone - 85,000 of those in Jordan.
On average around 2,000 Syrians arrive each day in Jordan and the country has already declared the influx is beyond what it can deal with and appealed for international help.
"Little children who were asked what they saw described body parts separated and burnt people being pulled apart like chicken. A little 9-year-old girl said that," Jolie told reporters after a two-day visit to Jordan's Zaatari camp.
"It's been a very heavy experience because often at times you come to these camps ... and rarely do you come when meet them as they cross the border and get to know people the moment they become a refugee," she said, stopping to compose herself.
"They will say: 'As the months go on there will be no more of us, our homes are gone are families are gone' ."
Escaping an escalating military campaign by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, refugees languish in an unfinished camp where aid agencies and authorities are struggling to provide the most basic shelter and facilities.
At Zaatari, 28,000 people live in searing late summer heat with limited facilities and choking, dust-filled winds.
"The world is watching as though they mean to humiliate the Syrian people. We feel we are in a big detention center and zoo, fenced around where everyone comes to capitalize on our suffering," said Musa Awadat, a father of six. "We didn't flee from Syria to come here to another prison."
'International appeals for funding to help refugees not being met'
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres, who toured the camp with Jolie and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, said their visit was a message to the world "to help us and the Jordanian government in order to massively invest in improving the living conditions of the refugees in this camp".
Jolie traveled to Syria in 2007 and again in 2009 to meet Iraqi refugees with her partner, actor Brad Pitt. During one trip they met Assad and his wife Asma, who later told Vanity Fair magazine that the couples lunched in the capital.
Jolie, dressed in a black T-shirt with her hair tied back, said that all appeals for international funding to tackling the refugee crisis had "not been met."
Syrian opposition groups say more than 27,000 people have died in an uprising that has lasted more than 17 months and has descended into outright civil war in the pivotal Arab state.
"The complexity of this crisis is one of the aspects that sets it apart, and the speed at which people have fled Syria," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva on Tuesday.
"With 100,000 having fled to neighboring countries in the space of a single month, August, that makes it an extraordinary acceleration of this crisis," he told a news briefing.
He said that almost 200,000 Syrians had crossed into Jordan, although not all were registered as refugees.
In April, Jolie was promoted from serving as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador to a special envoy.
U.N. ambassador Angelina Jolie visits Syrian refugees in Jordan
September 12, 2012 -- Updated 0122 GMT (0922 HKT)
"Body parts separated,
and burned people being pulled apart like chicken -- a little 9-year-old
girl said that," Jolie said during her visit to a refugee tent camp in
Jordan near the Syrian border.
Every day, an estimated
2,000 Syrians are fleeing the relentless bloodshed that has gripped
their country for the past 18 months, the United Nations' refugee agency said Tuesday.
That adds up to more than one quarter million Syrian refugees --
253,000 -- now living in camps and other temporary homes inside Jordan,
Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Life in the dusty Zaatari
refugee camp outside Mafraq, Jordan, is not easy for those living
there, many of whom have almost nothing after leaving their homes amid
violence. Members of one family told CNN they had fled over the border
with a 4-day-old baby and the clothes on their backs.
Others complained of being short of food and water.
Escorted to the border
overnight by the Jordanian military, Jolie witnessed the moment when
Syrians crossed into Jordan, becoming refugees before her eyes. The
actress, who is raising six children with partner Brad Pitt, said she
was greatly moved by what she had seen and spoke of the connection she
felt in particular with the mothers and their children as they faced
such challenging times.
"The amount of innocent
children that have been reported dead, the amount of innocent children
I've met here who are wounded and unaccompanied -- with their parents
being killed and now they're on their own -- it's impossible to imagine
any mother standing by and not stepping up and doing something to
prevent this," she said.
Jolie has made countless trips to the world's hotspots in her role as a U.N. goodwill ambassador -- including a visit to Syrian refugees in Turkey last year.
Jordan is bearing the
brunt of the refugee crisis sparked by Syria's civil war: More than
85,000 refugees have escaped to Jordan, and many more have fled to
neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq.
"Jordan has already
reached its limit in absorbing the refugee influx, and what is needed
now is to build more refugee camps for the Syrian refugees," Jordanian
Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said. "We have limited means, but this is
the land of the good people, and we will share with them whatever we
have, no matter how little (it) is."
Jolie urged other countries to do more to help the Syrian people.
"I am grateful to Jordan
and the border countries for saving the lives (of those) who are dying
in Syria. It's an extraordinary thing. We encourage the international
community to support the people here until one day they go back home."
Videos
AP Video
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by AssociatedPress
Her eyes welling up with tears, actress
Angelina Jolie spoke of the "horrific situation" in Syria, speaking
during a visit on Tuesday to a Jordanian camp for refugees who have fled
the civil war. (Sept. 11)
TODAY
.@AnnCurry reports on Angelina Jolie's visit to refugee camp near Syrian border: http://on.today.com/QC2zUA
Telegraph video
BBC video
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by Goodman84Sweden
Published on Sep 11, 2012 by BBCArabicNews
قالت نجمة هوليود أنجلا جولي ومبعوثة الأمم المتحدة الى مجيمات اللاجئين السوريين في الأردن إنها تتألم للوضع الإنساني الذي يمر به الفارون من القتال الدائر في سوريا حالياودعت الى التكاتف من أجل وضع حد للأزمة الإنسانية المتفاقمة.
CNN
