Angelina Jolie To Executive Produce For 'The Breadwinner' (Photo : REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY)
Hollywood A-lister Angelina Jolie called on Tuesday for a strong international response against the Islamic State (IS) for its use of mass rape as the central theme of its terroristic activities.
Jolie, a UN special envoy, and former Foreign Secretary William Hague shared their thoughts with Britain's House of Lords as co-founders of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), reports The Telegraph. The initiative is a campaign for rape victims in war zones.
Jolie said that IS, the most aggressive terrorist group today, "knows that it is a very effective weapon and they are using it as a centrepoint of their terror and their way of destroying communities and families, and attacking and dehumanizing."
Syria and Iraq are absolutely using rape and dictating it as a policy, Jolie said. She has actively campaigned for more than 10 years against the use of rape as a weapon of war, met with families and survivors of sexual violence to help make their voices heard.
She recalled meeting with women, men and child rape victims such as a seven- or eight-year-old girl who kept on rocking forward and backward and staring at the wall while crying and recently a 13-year-old Iraqi girl who was repeatedly raped.
Jolie also shared the story of a Syrian doctor who left the country for Libya out of fear that his wife and daughters would be raped in a camp. However, while crossing the Mediterranean, the family drowned.
One of her films, "In The Land of Blood and Honey," shown in 2011, was about mass rapes that happened during the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Hague said that after he viewed the movie when it was shown at the Foreign Office, he decided to team up with the actress which led to the creation of the PSVI.
In conclusion, Jolie said, "The most important thing is to understand what it's not: it's not sexual, it's a violent, brutal, terrorizing weapon and it is used unfortunately, everywhere," quotes Fox.
