Angelina Jolie blasts funding gap for Syrians

PLEDGING SUPPORT: US actress and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie talks to children during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan, on Friday. (AFP)

AZRAQ REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan: Actress Angelina Jolie Pitt, a special envoy for the UN refugee agency, has called on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region.
Jolie Pitt spoke at the Azraq camp for Syrian refugees on Friday while on a tour of humanitarian projects in Jordan. Jolie Pitt says the violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political resolution.
She decried the funding shortfalls for humanitarian agencies, saying the UN was operating with less than half of the budget required to support Syrian refugees. She says that “the gulf between our responsibilities and our actions has never been so wide.”
“Ask the fundamental question of what are the root causes of the Syrian conflict and what will it take to end it,” she said. Syria’s five-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced 11 million, half the country’s pre-war population.