Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt give $1 Million to Pakistan

Islamabad, Pakistan- Hollywood’s most powerful couple, Angelina JolieAngelina Jolie and Brad PittBrad Pitt today donated $1 million to the refugees fleeing the fighting in the Swat valley in Pakistan. Jolie, a UN goodwill ambassador was in Washington DC Thursday to celebrate World Refugee Day which is on Saturday June 20.

She spoke of her visits to Pakistani refugee camps having visited Pakistan as a goodwill ambassador on three separate occasions. Brad and Angelina donated the $1 million to the U.N. refugee agency providing aid to displaced people in Pakistan fleeing the fighting in Swat between the government and the Taliban.

In 2001, Pakistan was already host to the largest refugee population in the world due to almost 5 million refugees from Afghanistan that had escaped the invasion of their country by the Soviet Union in late 1979. Now it has an additional 2.3 million refugees from its own population of Pakistani citizens escaping the recent fighting between the Pakistan army and the Taliban militants in the Swat valley.

The United States recently pledged to give $110 million to the Pakistani refugee crisis but additional money and lots of it is needed for the millions of refugees in Pakistan and more needs to be done by other countries especially European nations and rich Gulf Arab countries according to the UN.

Although this donation by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is a drop in the bucket, it is a great humanitarian gesture by Hollywood’s most glamorous and popular couple to bring worldwide scrutiny to the plight of the refugees in Pakistan.

We at Pakistanis for Peace commend their effort in bringing more attention to the refugee crisis in Pakistan and hope that this will spur more donations to help millions of people and hundreds of thousands of displaced families survive until God willing the Taliban are eradicated from the Swat valley and eventually from all of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ameen.

For Donations please visit:

http://www.unhcr.org/emergency/pakistan/global_landing.html

And also from any mobile phone: Text "Swat" to 20222 to provide a $5 donation to the UN refugee agency in Pakistan

Reporting by Manzer Munir for www.PakistanisforPeace.com