Screengrab of Angelina Jolie’s talk at the National
Hollywood actor and renowned humanitarian Angelina Jolie on Wednesday said the international community needs to “do more” to help Pakistan overcome the devastation caused by floods, and vowed to play her part in drawing the world’s attention to the prevailing crisis.
“I am absolutely with you in pushing the international community to do more,” she said during a visit to the National Flood Response Coordination Center where she met Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal and was briefed on the country’s flood response and relief measures. “We speak of it [aid] in appeals, and relief and support, but this is something very, very different,” she said.
Noting this was not her first time visiting Pakistan—she had earlier visited the country to meet victims of the 2005 earthquake and the 2010 floods—she said she had “never seen anything like this.” Earlier, she visited flood-hit areas in Dadu district of Sindh, met victims, and heard of their needs that remain unmet, according to a press release issued by the International Rescue Committee.
“We are in a situation like this, where the needs are so great and truly every effort is either a life or death for so many people,” she said, while praising the ongoing relief work of the government and the Army in areas hit hardest by floods. “Every current effort that I’ve seen—I see the Army—I’ve been with the Army and with my colleagues and I’ve seen those lives who were saved but I’ve also … been speaking to people and thinking that if enough aid doesn’t come, they won’t be here in the next few weeks, they won’t make it,” she lamented.
“Too many children, so malnourished, and even if they make it through the next months, with the winter coming and the destruction of the crops and the hard reality … I am overwhelmed,” she said, while acknowledging that she doesn’t feel its “fair” to say that because “I’m not living this.”
She said she simply try to “speak out and help,” stressing that she “really can’t imagine what it feels like to be there [in flooded areas].”
Referring to the briefing, she said she could see what was being done and what was going to be needed in the weeks to come. “I am here as a friend to Pakistan,” she added.
“I think this is a real wake-up call to the world about where we are at, that climate change is not only real, and it’s not only coming, it’s very much here,” she stressed, while also praising Pakistan for “the generosity that the Pakistani people have shown to the people of Afghanistan over the years” as a host country of refugees. “It’s often the countries that don’t have as much that give more than so many other countries,” she said.