US star visits Sudan
2004-10-28 11:00
Khartoum - Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie said on Wednesday the situation in Darfur was "unbelievably horrible" and that security remained a major problem, after a tour of Sudan's war-torn region.
"It is just the worst thing I have ever seen ... What is happening to the people and women there is just unbelievably horrible," the United Nations goodwill ambassador told reporters in the Sudanese capital.
The United Nations says the 20-month-old conflict pitting government forces and Arab militia allies against ethnic minority rebels has created the world's worst ongoing humanitarian crisis, while Washington has called it genocide.
"I was told that only yesterday a village was destroyed" in South Darfur state, said the goodwill ambassador.
Unsafe
Jolie said she also met a woman who told her that both she and her 12-year-old daughter had been raped.
The pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias have been blamed for some of the worst atrocities in the conflict, including massacres, wholesale destruction of villages and rape.
The UN Security Council has passed resolutions calling on Khartoum to rein in the Janjaweed and threatened to impose sanctions on Sudan's vital oil industry unless it stabilizes the security situation in its western region.
"It is quite unsafe outside the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps where any woman who goes out to collect firewood can be raped and a man can be killed by the Janjaweed," Jolie said.
"Everywhere is not 100 percent safe and if a place is safe today, it will be unsafe tomorrow," she said.
The 28-year-old Academy award winner and star of the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider serves as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
An estimated 1.4 million people have been displaced from their homes in the Darfur conflict and a further 200 000 forced into exile in neighbouring Chad.
Jolie, after having witnessed at first hand the hardships in the camps, appealed to the international community to increase its aid to ease the crisis in Darfur.
"Operations of the UN agencies and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) need to be funded by donors so that they can carry on with their humanitarian tasks," she said.