Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Donate $1 Million to Human Rights Watch
Just a week after announcing that the Jolie-Pitt Foundation donated $2 million to to build a clinic in Ethiopia, the Foundation has donated $1 million dollars to Human Rights Watch. HRW is an “international organization Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.”
Some of the issues it looks at include land minds, Gay rights, genocide, torture and street children. The Jolie-Pitt Foundation’s donation will specifically go to to support the group’s efforts in Burma and Zimbabwe.
Last weekend Brad wrote a glowing article for Vanity Fair about the director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Here’s a little bit of what he had to say:
“Because he directs the hardest-hitting and most fearless human-rights organization in the world, Human Rights Watch. Because his name sends a chill down the spine of human-rights abusers, making them think twice about the potential cost of their repression. Human Rights Watch turns 30 this year, and if its first 15 years established the New York–based group as a stinging critic of abusive governments on the left and the right, its second 15 years, under the deft command of Kenneth Roth, has seen Human Rights Watch go global.”
Burma has come under international international scrutiny for various human rights abuses including recruiting child soldiers, persecuting ethnic minorities and plundering the country’s resources.
HRW contends that Zimbabwe is suffering at the hands of president Robert Mugawbee.
In March 2008 Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won a first round of presidential elections despite efforts by Mugabe and the ZANU-PF party to rig the vote through violence and intimidation.
Since that time, HRW had documented the murder of “150 opposition party supporters and the abduction, beating, and torture of thousands by ruling party allies.”
Kudos to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation for supporting international human rights with this donation.
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