Goodwill ambassador Jolie with a resident of Chikook, Baghdad © UNHCR
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UNHCR’s goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie, paid a visit to some of the estimated 1.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq Thursday 23 July, her third to the country.
Jolie spoke to some families in the Chikook camp northwest of Bagdhad which houses 20,000 people, mostly women and children, displaced by sectarian violence that wracked the country beginning in 2006.
The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) trucks in water to the camp, and is helping to repair the dilapidated water system.
The agency notes that some 300,000 IDPs have returned to their homes in Iraq, but many hundreds of thousands remain displaced in Iraq and in neighbouring countries.
“There are some changes. There are returns of displaced people, not a big number but there is progress”, Jolie noted later in the day.
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News story, GenevaLunch, 24 July 2009.
Filed under: International organizations
Tags: Angelina Jolie, Baghdad, Chikook, goodwill ambassador, IDPs, Iraq, sectarian violence, UNHCR