Angelina Jolie Talks About What She Saw in Yemen

UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie said she visited Yemen ten days ago and met a small portion of the four million people displaced by the conflict.

Describing what she saw during her visit, she said: "I visited one informal settlement that was home to 130 families. Only 20 of them receiving any food aid at all – and then, it was only when funding is available."

She continued during the fundraising event for Yemen, hosted by Sweden and Switzerland and organized by the United Nations, yesterday, "I visited a makeshift school, it was made up of five small, dark rooms. The children sitting on the floor and they hadn’t eaten. Nor had the teacher. She is a volunteer, and she told me she walked for at least an hour each day to get to that remote place, to try to give the kids some hope for a future. Because they have nothing. No food. No pens. No desks. No school books. No salary for the teacher. Thirteen-year-olds were sitting next to 3-year-olds, striving to learn to read and write, in a hope for a future that they may never see.”

She also said she visited sites that had no toilets or showers. Because "there are no school, and most of the children, because of years of conflict, were illiterate. Many young girls being married off". She also met a "mother who had lost three of her children to preventable illnesses. Her son was now sick and in the hospital. Even if the hospital has medicine to treat him – which most don’t - she won’t have the money to pay for it."

"This is the reality of an aid appeal that is drastically under-funded, amid a conflict that has gone on for so many years without political solutions," Angelina said.

On top of the suffering, Yemen is hosting over 100,000 refugees from Somalia, Syria, Ethiopia, among other countries, without any support.

"It is heartbreaking. It is infuriating. And above all, because this is a man-made crisis that must be ended."

~ UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie at the High-Level Pledging Event on the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen.

Full statement ⬇️ #YemenCantWaithttps://t.co/k68ZXL3dAa

— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) March 17, 2022

"So, it is heart breaking. It is infuriating. And above all, because this is a man-made crisis that must be ended."