Jolie praises India for giving shelter to refugees

NEW DELHI: Hollywood heart-throb and Goodwill Ambassador of UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Angelina Jolie on Sunday hailed India for giving shelter to displaced people of a number of countries and said she would work with New Delhi in this field.

Jolie, who is in India since last month for shooting of a movie, met Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma and they discussed issues relating to refugees in India for about an hour.

After the meeting, she said India's gesture of sheltering refugees from various countries, even though it has needful people of its own, is commendable.

"The wonderful thing that I have learned since I have been in India is there are many needs for your own people and yet you have all been so gracious and been so open to many refugees over the years," she said.

"India should be commended for all that is done and I am grateful to the Indian people. We have agreed to work together," Jolie said in the presence of Sharma.

She particularly appreciated the fact that refugees from many parts of the world, with different religions and cultures, were being encouraged to come to India and their identity maintained.

The recipient of Academy Award and three Golden Globe awards was accompanied by UN officials at her first official engagement in India since she came here for the shooting of a film on slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl.

Jolie noted that she had met refugees from Afghanistan and Myanmar on Saturday.

Sharma said he had apprised her of the programmes being undertaken by the government for refugees here. He said he emphasised the relevance of Mahatma Gandhi even in the present time.

Her meeting with Sharma came a day after she came to Delhi and spent some time with Sikh Afghan and Myanmarese refugees at camps run by the Khalsa Diwan Welfare Society and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

She listened to Sikh children playing religious music at the Welfare Society run by Afghan refugees of the Sikh faith and interacted with the students among them some 9,500 Afghan-Sikh refugees under the direct care of UNHCR.

Jolie was named as the UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in 2001 since when she has helped bring the forgotten refugee crises to the attention of the world media.