Angelina Jolie is using her celebrity status to once again draw light to the situation in Darfur.
In an article the 34-year-old actress penned for Time magazine, Angelina reminded citizens of the world that the United Nations would hear the results of an investigation they called for into the situation in Darfur.
On Friday, members of the United Nations Security Council will learn the results of the International Criminal Court’s Darfur investigation.
“The evidence the prosecutor has presented is clear and compelling,” Jolie writes, pointing out that “millions of people have been displaced” and “hundreds of thousands have been killed.”
Despite the Bush administration labeling the Darfur situation as “genocide,” Jolie says the words have not “compelled us to intervene.”
Angelina expressed her outrage over Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, kicking out 16 international aid groups after he was indicted on seven war crime counts and five crimes against humanity counts. And the actress wrote to remind the public about the struggle those in Darfur continue to face.
“Darfur has almost disappeared from the news, and experts now call it a ‘low-intensity’ conflict. But the intensity of the crisis has not lessened for those who are struggling to survive. More than 250,000 people from Darfur have lived destitute lives in refugee camps in Chad for six years now,” Angelina wrote. “Camps with more than 2 million internally displaced persons inside Darfur are even worse. Thirty percent of those displaced are school-age children. Girls leaving the camps are raped; boys leaving the camps are killed. They want an education; they want to go back to their villages, to their land; they want peace. But they also want justice.”
Angelina claims she learned about how disturbing the situation was in Darfur, during a visit to Chad she took in 2004.
“On that trip — more than five years ago — the refugees I met told me that the government was organizing the violence. About a year later, the international community came to the same conclusion. Some began to call the violence ‘mass atrocities.’ Others ramped up the rhetoric and called it ‘crimes against humanity.’ Nothing changed.”
The actress said the Security Council member states now have to decide what to do about the situation.
“As they are considering Bashir’s fate they are also considering their own,” she wrote.