(Reuters) — The United Nations Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) Special Envoy Angelina Jolie called on world leaders gathering in New York later this month to put the “root causes of the Syrian conflict and what it will take to end it” at the centre of their discussions.
During a visit to the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan on Friday (September 9), Jolie said all of the camp’s 60,000 residents had suffered loss and trauma, yet they still count themselves “among the lucky ones.”
Jolie said the 75,000 Syrians stranded in the no-man’s land on the Jordanian border known as the Berm had no access to humanitarian assistance and “None of the basic protections under international humanitarian law are being applied” to them. Jolie said the the world has known about the situation in the Berm for months, but no solutions have been put forward.
Jolie said any increase in humanitarian funding was deeply appreciated and absolutely necessary, but refugees wanted to know “when they will be able to go home.”
