Angelina Jolie meets IS victims at Northern Iraq camp

Angelina Jolie at Khanke IDP Camp in Northern Iraq
[PHOTO: UNifeed] 

Khanke, Northern Iraq: Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie and special envoy for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called upon the international community "to step up and do more" to help refugees and displaced people in Iraq and Syria.

On her two-day official trip to Kurdistan, Angelina visited a refugee camp and met with smiles and warm greetings from survivors of Islamic State attacks.

Jolie, 39, appealed to world leaders and asked them to find common ground and move forward.

"The international has to step up and do more. UNHCR received only half of the funding needed in 2014 for programmes in Iraq and Syria and is extremely concerned at slow pace of pledges for this year. Without more assistance the situation is unsustainable, she said at a press conference at a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq this weekend.

She visited internally displaced Iraqis living in an informal settlement and a formal camp at Khanke, accommodating more than 20,000 people from the Yazidi minority who fled Sinjar and surrounding areas in early August.

More than 3.8 million Syrians have fled to the neighbouring states of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Another 7.6 million Syrians are displaced inside the country.

There are some 3.1 million internally displaced Iraqis throughout the country, including a million who had been displaced between 2003 and 2013 and 2.1 million who were displaced in 2014.