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Jolie, who serves as a United Nations special envoy for
refugees, was speaking at a news conference in southeastern
Turkey, home to Syrians and Iraqis displaced by war, on World
Refugee Day.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said in a report last week that
there were now more refugees than at any other time in history,
with 59.5 million people displaced from their homes worldwide.
"There is an explosion of human suffering and displacement on a
level that has never been seen before," Jolie said, warning that
Syrians and Iraqis were running out of safe havens as
neighboring states reached the limit of their capacity.
"It is hard to point to a single instance where, as an
international community, we are decisively addressing the root
causes of refugee flows," she said.
Jolie and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres
met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in the city of Midyat, some
50 km (30 miles) from the Syrian border. She also visited
refugees.
This was Jolie's third visit to Turkey since 2011, when the
conflict in Syria began. The war has displaced more than 3
million refugees, or almost a fifth of the pre-war population.
Turkey shelters 1.8 million Syrian refugees, as well as
thousands of Yazidis, whose ancient religion draws on
Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam, who fled attacks by
Islamic State in Iraq last August.
The long-running wars in neighboring Iraq and Syria mean that
Turkey has overtaken Pakistan to become the world's leading host
of refugees, and has spent $6 billion on assisting Syrians
alone, UNHCR said.
(The story is corrected to remove reference in paragraph 6 to
fast-breaking dinner, which Jolie did not attend)
(Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Umit Bektas; Editing by
Digby Lidstone)
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