Angelina Jolie Visits Haiti: Adoption Rumors Pop Up

Award-winning actress, Angelina Jolie, visited northern Ecuador last week in her role as goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It was a return visit, since she made a field trip to the country in June of 2002 to help raise awareness about the problems faced by female refugees and children.

Angelina arrived in the city of Lago Agrío, capital of Sucumbíos province on June 17, and visited the community of Barranca Bermeja on the border with Colombia, where she checked in on refugee families. Angelina also reunited with a Colombian mother she met on her last visit and met with refugee women in a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

"It's been eight years since I was last here and UNHCR's presence has grown considerably," Jolie said after arriving in Lago Agrío, Ecuador.

Angelina also said that she wanted to meet with people she had met on her previous trip as well as bring a renewed focus to violence against women and unaccompanied minors: "I am so happy to be able to reconnect with some familiar faces, refugees I had met with during my 2002 trip."

She also took part in a global live video link from northern Ecuador with Washington, DC, Damascus in Syria and the Congo. The event included refugees, High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres and US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Angelina Jolie then made an unannounced visit to Haiti where she met with the embattled nation's President René Préval. Her last official visit to Haiti was in February 2010, when she also met with the Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez.

As soon as news of Jolie's unannounced visit with the Haitian President became public, rumors popped up that the actress was "thinking" about adopting a Haitian child. Whether she is or not, this was obviously not the purpose of her visit, and as usual, the information comes from an unnamed "source."

It's a real shame to turn her sincere efforts to put a spotlight on the need help vulnerable people into an opportunity for gossip. Angelina Jolie's journals from some of her field trips were published in a book called Notes from My Travels, available for a little over $10 on Amazon, but probably worth much more than picking up a copy of the Globe or the Star if one is really interested in getting to know her.

Angelina also visited the United Nations Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) log base, which works toward recovery and restoring security and stability in Haiti.

Sources:
Daily Star: Angelina in Secret Mission to Adopt Child from Haiti (6/21/2010)
AC: Angelina Jolie: Past, Present and Future (5/14/2010)
UNHCR - UN Refugee Agency: Angelina Jolie