Superstar Angelina Jolie has launched a women’s center at the London School of Economics aimed at ending wartime rapes.
“There is no stable future for a world in which crimes committed against women go unpunished,” Jolie said in a press release. “We need the next generation of educated youth with inquisitive minds and fresh energy, who are willing not only to sit in the classroom but to go out into the field and the courtrooms and to make a decisive difference.”
Angelina dedicated the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security to a 13-year-old girl she met in Iraq. The embattled teen was a rape survivor who had been captured as an ISIS sex slave and was cast out from her community because of her rape past.
The LSE center will do research at preventing sexual violence used against women during war. “What we have begun at LSE today is for that Iraqi girl and others like her, who pay the price for the culture of impunity for crimes against women, and our failure to prevent conflict,” Jolie said.
The center will help rape victims prosecute their rapists and educate women on how to rebuild their communities after wartime conflicts. In 2001, Angelina was named the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Examiner reported.
Since then, Jolie has visited UNHCR refugee operations in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Tanzania, Kenya, Cambodia, Thailand, Pakistan and Ecuador. The experience completely changed her outlook.
“I’ve become a better human being,” Jolie said. “I’ve learned the strength of the human spirit. “I see different aid workers in camps helping each other from everywhere – people who have come together from all over the world to help.
Angelina added: “It’s changed my view of what is important. I’m not so concerned with things I used to be so concerned with. I feel that [now] I’m of some use to other people in the world.”
Becoming a mom has been a similarly transformative experience. Jolie adopted son Maddox in 2002 and has since adopted two other children and given birth to three.
“It was only when I came out of my shell and started taking care of others that I found the real Angelina,” said Jolie, who’s married to actor Brad Pitt.
Angelina discussed how her charity work changed her outlook on life in her diary, Notes from My Travels.
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